Tag: abuse

Two Poems by Ann Kammerer

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

Little Veils

When we were little,
me and Janie
wore veils to mass—
white ones,
lacy ones,
triangular ones
that Mom
pinned in place
with thin metal clips
so they’d stay put
and wouldn’t slip
from our fine yellow hair.

We wore percale dresses, too—
the same one every Sunday,
matching ones from Sears
with tiny white flowers,
a Peter Pan collar,
and a deep blue sash
with a fake satin sheen.

Mom said to hurry
so I helped Janie dress.
She said Dad got mad
when we dawdled
and made him late
to church.
When we were done—
our sashes bow-tied
and our white Mary Janes
all buckled and shined—
we went to find Mom
as she smoked
in the bathroom,
a hairbrush, bobby pins,
and veils on the sink.

“About time.”
She took a last puff
and tossed her Viceroy
into the toilet,
making it singe.
“Janie first.”

Janie backed away.
Mom grabbed her arm
and pushed her down
on the edge of the tub.

“Good little girls
do what they’re told
Hold still.”

Mom laid the veil
over a knot of snarls,
wedging bobby pins
over and under
each side.

“There,” she said.
“All done.”

Janie sobbed.
I wiped her face
with toilet paper.
Mom stood behind me,
pinning down my veil,
poking my scalp,
telling me to be quiet
when I said it hurt.

“There,” she said.
“You’re done, too.”

She touched my cheek,
then Janie’s,
saying it was OK now.
Fiddling with a loose button
on her faded rose dress,
she draped a black veil
over her wavy brown hair,
smoothing the lacy ends
over her shoulders.

“See,” she said.
“I have to wear one, too,
just like you.”

Mom put on lipstick
and feathered on rouge.
She dabbed tan make-up
on the deep gray circles
beneath her eyes,
then over the
green-purple bruises
on her wrists—
the ones she got when Dad
slammed down his drink
and grabbed her,
pushing her
against the wall.

“We were just
dancing,” she had said later
when she tucked us in bed,
her hair falling over her eyes
as she kissed us goodnight.
“He does that sometimes.
With me. After he has
a bad day at work.”

*

Communion

We always sat
in the same order
in the same pew
at the same mass
at St. Lucy’s.

Dad slid in first,
Mom second,
holding Janie’s hand.
I got in next,
my bare legs sticking
to the unvarnished pew.
My big brother Freddie
sat beside me and
my other brother Charlie
sat at the end,
his head swiveling
as he looked for Theresa,
the Italian girl whose dad
owned Armando’s,
Dad’s favorite bar.

“Quit fidgeting.”
Mom poked me
as I fiddled with my veil
and clicked the beaded latch
on my vinyl purse.
Janie wiggled, too,
kicking the back of the pew.
Dad winced and bent over,
one hand on his stomach,
the other pressed
to his forehead.

“He doesn’t
feel good,” Mom sighed.
“I don’t either.”

Her breath smelled
fruity and sour,
just like it had last night
when she tucked
me and Janie in bed.

“We should’ve skipped
mass,” she said.
“Your dad.
He’s in no condition.”

Mom rubbed her eyes
and licked her dry lips.
The pipe organ echoed
as a boy in a white robe
carried a jeweled crucifix
down the center aisle.
Two boys followed
clutching lit candles.
A third swung
an ornate brass bowl
on a chain,
spewing spicy smoke.
The priest came last,
draped in brilliant sateen,
his hands clasped
atop the copper filagree
embroidered on his robe.

Sun poured through
the stained-glass windows
as the boys reached the altar
and placed the cross
and candles beside
a small, pearled tabernacle
with a golden dome.
The priest stepped up
and raised his arms.
We all stood
in prayer.

“Stand up.”
Mom kicked Dad
in the shin,
but he didn’t move,
mumbling we’d all
be sitting back down
anyway.

“See.”
He muttered prayers
as we all sat and stood
then sat again,
just like he said.
Opening our hymnals,
we sang and prayed
to a father and son
and holy ghost,
then knelt
to bow our heads.

The priest chanted.
The altar boys rang bells.
People rose
from their pews
to walk single file
and kneel at a railing
by the altar.
Folding their hands
they closed their eyes
and opened their mouths,
the priest placing wafers
on their tongues
before they got up
and filed back
to their seats.

“It’s our turn now, right?”
Freddie nudged Charlie.

“Yeah, yeah,” Charlie said.

They stumbled out,
webbing their hands
beneath their chins.

“Wait for me,” I said.
“I want a cookie, too.”

When I started to scooch,
Mom grabbed my sash,
tugging me back.

“No,” she said.
“You can’t go.”

She said I was
too little,
that Janie was
too little, too,
that the boys
were the only ones
who could go
to communion
since she and Dad
had been bad
and missed confession.

“We’ll go next Sunday,” she said,
“after we say a few
Hail Marys and Our Fathers
to get rid of our sins.”

*

Ann Kammerer lives near Chicago, and is from Michigan. Her short fiction and poetry is typically set in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, and examines the tensions and ideals of people living in the rustbelt. She has published fiction and poetry in literary magazines and anthologies, and has five poetry collections through independent small presses. You can find her recent or upcoming work in Fictive Dream, ONE ART, Chiron Review, The Broken Spine, 10 by 10 Flash, Open Arts Forum, Cold Caller Magazine, Cajun Mutt Press, and at annkammerer.com

Three Poems by Dana Henry Martin

~ ONE ART ~ 4 Comments

No Mental-Health Narrative in My Town

There is no narrative in my town. Just lights
near the bridge that’s been dubbed a suicide
hot spot. Every weekend, nearly, those lights.
Adults. Teens. Nobody who makes the news.
Locals expect the living prophet who speaks
to and for God to fix us here in canyon country,
in cliff country. People on vacation slip while
taking pictures, while hiking and, sometimes,
alongside the person they love or their pet.
People slip. People fall. When I was in a state
of high mania, which meant I thought I might be
the devil, my therapist had me sit in a chair.
She started touching me to release the pain.
Her hands traveled over my neck, across
my shoulders. You’re in the glass house,
she said, the one above the creek, before you
were raped. God can see everything you do.
He sees you now. She wiped my arms
downward as if sloughing death from me.
Let God touch you. Let him wash through you.
Jesus is calling you to him. Don’t resist.
Two days later, I was in the psychiatric ward
at the hospital. They call it B Med.
Until I was admitted, I knew it as the name
a local poet used because he struggled
with depression. B Med. A joke. People
who are manic run in circles like animals
in the zoo or patients in B Med. That’s what
a doctor said during my appointment
when I told him I live with bipolar.
Sometimes there aren’t sirens. Just flowers
and signs that say things in threes, like
It’s not over and We love you and Don’t give up.
The city tears it all down, doesn’t want tourists
to know what happens here, what God either
can’t say or isn’t able to hear. When I stand,
the therapist is crying. This is love, she says.
Can’t you feel it? There’s no narrative
in my town. There’s just whatever this is.

*

The Knave

What if instead of talking in tongues, they’d called it
Voicing what the body needs that can’t be held in language.

What if instead of saying This is proof you love God,
they’d muttered, No matter what they do to us, every little girl

wails when her father dies. Sounds rushed from my mouth
like bees, swarming the nave. The girl of me escaped,

like so many cast-off clones, and stung congregants
whose hands were touching me, an everywhere touch

like his fingers on my back, my shirt pulled up at his orders,
the skin between us shared, mine belonging to him first,

my flesh his flesh, my fingers, my nails. We were nailed
together in life and in death, him in his anthropoid coffin,

me in the one place where I thought I might loosen his hold,
this inverted Pandora’s box of wood and fancy glass. What if

instead of talking about eternity or the trinity, they’d confessed
We knew we knew we’re sorry before drowning me in their despair?

*

I’m a Wake

I’m a wake, funerary. They prop me up
between expensive flowers and
the cheapened dead. I’m open casket,

open book, brittle as paper, lonely
as the printed word. I’m a thesaurus
of blessings and condolences,

pencil skirts and skinny, filtered
cigarettes. I’m pacing and handshakes.
I’m shuffling and stammering.

I’m satin, mahogany, charcuterie boards.
I’m the death announcement and
the estate sale. Oh, what I wouldn’t give

to be the wedding or the graduation,
even the birth with all its blood
and feces, and the bated everlastingness

of the moment before the first breath.
I’m a wake. Let me sit beside you.
There, there. It’s all right. Here I am.

*

Dana Henry Martin’s work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Barrow Street, CALYX, Cider Press Review, Laurel Review, Meat for Tea, Muzzle, New Letters, Rogue Agent, Sheila-Na-Gig, Thimble Literary Magazine, Trampoline, and other journals. Their chapbooks include Love and Cruelty (Meat for Tea, forthcoming), No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press), and Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books).

Evaporation At the Scenic Overlook by Emma Goldman-Sherman

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Evaporation At the Scenic Overlook

Footsteps as the truck moved on. I turned to see him
walking toward me with a big red Slurpee.
You left me at the hotel, he said. You don’t wanna
wake up beside me? I said, I never woke up beside you.
I had to leave to wake up, a joke he didn’t get. I kicked
at the sand on the blacktop with my boot.

Well, you’re stuck with me, he said.
I don’t believe that anymore, I told him.
You can’t leave me out here, he threatened,
I’ll dehydrate. Fat chance with that Slurpee
sweating and dripping sizzles onto the asphalt.

In the steam of that liquid rising I saw my marriage evaporate.
All the dishes, the vacuuming, dusting, the washing and folding
taking care and making sure, the having everything
in case he might desire and the sex without pleasure.
The silence. The kind that made me wish for noise.

Gone. I wouldn’t get in the car with him again.
I’d find another way into the desert onto the rocks, down
the steep drop. It’s good – you want some, he offered
but I wasn’t thirsty. I felt different, on my way somehow.

Take the car. The keys are inside. And leave you here? Are you crazy?
I thought things were good. We slept under the stars. We were together.

I stood firm, no hip shift, no head tilt, no smile
after so many years lying. I bit my cheeks
refused to please. What is it? he asked
as if he could fix it. Don’t come any closer, I told him.
I release you. I’m gonna live in the desert-garden
green and lush. He started to pace with impatience.
There’s nothing green here. Let’s get in the car.
You don’t know anything about the desert.

How we lash out when we cannot get our way
to minimize, infantilize, we turn our language into knives.

*

Emma Goldman-Sherman’s poems are forthcoming in Bellingham Review (finalist for the 49th Parallel Award) and the chapbook, “Dear Palestine,” (Moonstone Press). Their work has been published in Quartet, Strange Horizons, Toyon, Eckleburg, Gigantic Sequins (1st Prize), Ghost City Press, Best Microfictions (2025 & ’26) and others. They support writers and artists at BraveSpace.online.

When I Turned Sixteen by Lisa Low

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

When I Turned Sixteen

And achieved some of the greatness young girls
aspire, outgrowing my childish body—that lanky,
long-thorned thing—and became a woman,
with hips and thighs and cup-able breasts,
enough to fill a grown man’s hands, my mother
bought me a new pair of pants. My father
must have been drinking that day, for when
I tried them on, he grabbed me from behind
and screamed with a shrill, excited, bird-like
call, sliding in his socks behind me, as if
I were a carnival. I twisted free, fled upstairs,
and locked myself in my room, spending
the rest of that friendless night alone, my face
wet against the pillow, bereft in a comfortless dark.

*

Lisa Low was first runner-up for the Shakespeare Prize at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her work has been shortlisted for Ploughshares and has appeared in or is forthcoming in many literary journals including The Adroit Journal, The Boston Review, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Southern Indian Review, Conduit, The Hopkins Review, and ONE ART. She has been nominated for Best New Poets 2025. Her chapbook, Late in the Day was issued in July 2025 from Seven Kitchens Press.

Four Poems by Hilary Sideris

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Treatment

If not for that need
I took for love & then

that shove, I wouldn’t have
married & divorced &

owed five years
of maintenance to my ex-

spouse whose accent
I found sexy till I didn’t.

I wouldn’t have been awake
at 3 AM to see that bug

traverse our coverlet
& watch the blood—mine?

his?—gush as I crushed it
between finger & thumb.

The toxic squad
wouldn’t have come &

sprayed our bed, treatment
for which I also paid.

*

Testosterone

Ground down like a soft
graphite stub in a hand-turned

sharpener, at night I count
backwards to the beginning

of divorce till boredom
overcomes remorse. How many

have been fired since cancer
research stalled? Fools in charge

confuse transgenic mice with
transgender men. My lawyer

Venmos a reminder to replenish
his retainer. U-Haul boxes

accrue dust, pile up like debts
beside my bed. Should I have

tried testosterone, purchased
a magnifying mirror, plucked

my upper lip & wanted sex
with my husband?

*

Shove

My cute nephew, a studious child,
has joined a frat, lifts weights,

drinks protein shakes. Last week
he shoved his mother when she

got up in his face—my little sister
isn’t asking for advice. I offer none.

Now’s not the time to say the man
I married hit his mom. What’s

worse, a husband or son’s shove?
She hopes he finds a girlfriend soon.

* 

Boomer Beach

I’ve only met you once,
for Thai, but you live on a beach
& I watch waves to meditate,
so I lie to my therapist,
drive to your gated community.
The surf, gnarly before an early

Nor’easter, churns up the Jersey
shore, its seawall higher, reinforced
since Hurricane Sandy. I take a picture—
not of us—of the wild rose hips,
their easy sway that says we’re all
fair game, but we’re still here.

After two glasses of Sancerre,
you talk at length about containing
hydrogen—not arrogance, I think,
just a man lost in his work.
You say you levitated in your youth,
show me a star-shaped scar

in your left palm, stitches between
finger & thumb, tell me about
the house in the California hills
you didn’t want to sell,
but the wildfires
burned closer every year.

*

Hilary Sideris is the author of the poetry collections Calliope (Broadstone Books, 2024), Liberty Laundry (Dos Madres Press, 2022), Animals in English (Dos Madres Press, 2020), The Silent B (Dos Madres Press, 2019), Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay Books, 2019), The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful LLC, 2016) and Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada, 2014). Originally from Indiana and a longtime Brooklyn resident, she is a co-founder and curriculum developer for CUNY Start, a college preparatory program within the City University of New York.

That’s on you by Sophie Frankpitt

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

That’s on you

watch her fade away
her gaunt cheeks and
hollowed eyes, once
bouncing hair now in
tendrils, cheekbones
jut in sharp lines and
wrists that look too
fragile to touch, watch
her punish herself for
all she is not

that’s on you
all you taught us
all the pictures
the waist-touching,
leering, the men on
the street who shouted
at fifteen-year-old us,
the boys who lined us
up on the playground,
the dates women didn’t
come home from, the
streets we can’t walk
down, the live location
always on, hit by hit –

hit by hit –

scream by scream
deafened by other
women’s pleas
she fell to her knees
praying that her own pain –
the pain you so ironically
call self-made –
would distract her
from lifetimes of yours

*

Sophie Frankpitt is a poet and linguist from Somerset, England, having recently graduated from the University of Warwick with a Linguistics degree. She is a newly emerging poet, though she regularly performed spoken word in Amsterdam during the year she studied there.