The Rape of Diana
headline: The Daily Telegraph, 21st July 1969
It was the way she swayed
they said, the come on,
the dare.
It was how she hypnotised with
that slow blink
of her stare.
It was the way she flaunted
her distance, divinity, her own
definition of eternity.
Her cool, all-or-nothing, pull.
They branded their boot marks
in the dust of her skin, rubbed
her face in the proof of a pin,
went back in gangs, again and
again – laid claim, laid her bare.
They shrunk her, squared her,
electrified her glow, drained her
world to monochrome
and still she rises
Lesley Ingram’s first collection Scumbled (Cinnamon) was published in 2015. Her poems have appeared online and in printed journals & anthologies since 2010. She lives in Herefordshire, and is currently working on her second collection.