From Lines by Kenneth Patchen #48
‘Yet there will be peace in certain
parts of the city; sonnets dripping like moss from
the walls; women holding their gifts out, arms,
thighs, their quick song…’
— Kenneth Patchen, ‘The Hunted City’
This body of blood & flesh, this ‘gift’
this female body, about which even now so little is known
& so much contested
so many contracts drawn up by men —
just imagine your body as the battleground
in every battle of your life —
a geography more advanced
than the most sophisticated cartographerman
now imagine victory in this war
if we are our bodies we have autonomy over them
if we have not autonomy over them we are not our bodies
in this case we exist as lifeless but sentient
entities roped to someone else’s barrel
you could write a sonnet about this, maybe
Katy Evans-Bush‘s most recent poetry publication is Broken Cities (Smith|Doorstop). She is currently working on a poetry collection (From Lines by Kenneth Patchen) and a polemical memoir, A Room of Someone Else‘s, forthcoming from CB Editions. She lives in Kent and works as an independent editor and poetry tutor. katyevansbush.com