Poor girl, homestuck on chapel steps,
pin-plucked and nip-tucked
into her paper figure.
They read yesterday’s news
in the ink across her collar bone.
Her classified crowded slippers blister
red blotches panting ‘we’ll be in touch’.
So she tips between pavement cracks
split seams and spills out sand,
has to scour her hours from the floor.
Cello tape smile caught on a crinkle
till the man with a nail for a tongue
hammers her a better one.
He mistakes her legs for screwdrivers,
tries to put them back in their box,
then pets her like a bitch when she bites,
and asks if she’s learnt to beg,
just another mass produced misogynist
with his windup voice box
explaining to her what she should expect.
Carol J Forrester 
This is excellent and hard-hitting. Monsters are really much scarier when they are real than any imagined Jabberwocky.
Thank you Bjorn.
Whoa! Think that dog bit me at the end. Sharp!
You’ve captured the trauma and abuse. This one certainly stands out from the nonsense poetry. Evil controls and destroys, not only in the darkest fairy tales.
I did start the poem in a similar vein of the jovial nonsense poems, but it sort of spurred off into this part way through.
A punch to the groin, and a severe shaking of the prompt. Superb Dramedy, and I liked “just another mass-produced misogynist with his wind-up voice box”.
Thank you Glenn. I’m quite chuffed with that line myself.
Biff, Pow, Bam — Dark and angry Carol, and no punches pulled.
It wasn’t where I set out to take the poem, but that is the way it seemed to go.
Suitably hard hitting, I felt for her, very well done
Thank you Ain.
This chimes with my experiences of visiting various doctors for PMDD…
This was a traumatic yet realistic read….I really felt for that poor girl stuck with the misogynist… 😦
Ah, perhaps I should have put a trigger warning in the title, I hope it didn’t hit anything too close to home.
Not at all,I’ve read worse! 🙂
In the sense that I’ve read stuff more traumatic and distressing than this,but still,it hit me a bit,in its own way..
‘pin-plucked and nip-tucked
into her paper figure.’ This image will stay with me, Carol.
These are the sorts of comments that I love to read as a poet.
Good writing always leaves an indelible mark.🙂
A difficult topic which you “ACED” … I have friends who remind me of your ‘woman.’ Tragic.
Thank you Helen.
An interesting poem. Seems there are a lot of paper figures out there! Well done.
Wow! Just WOW! This certainly goes to the darker side…perhaps of domestic abuse? Some type of abuse for sure….gritty and gut punching. Sometimes, without our expecting it, the must takes us there.
I wasn’t thinking necessarily of abuse, but more those daily micro aggressions that women can face which end up impacting how we see ourselves and the world around us. Gritty and gut punching was certainly what I was after however.