"With No Immediate Cause", by Ntozake Shange

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what the guidelines are for lj-cuts here, other than for length, so I used my usual potential-triggers guideline.

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"With No Immediate Cause"

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
every five minutes a
woman is raped/every ten minutes
a little girl is molested
yet I rode the subway today
I sat next to an old man who
may have beaten his old wife
3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
he might have sodomized his daughter
but I sat there
cuz the men on the train
might beat some young women
later in the day or tomorrow
I might not shut my door fast
enough push hard enough
every 3 minutes it happens
some women's innocence
rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth
like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn
apart/their mouths
menses red split/every
three minutes a shoulder
is jammed through plaster and the oven door/
chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or
boiling sperm decorate her body
I rode the subway today
and bought a paper from an east Indian man who might
have held his old lady onto
a hot pressing iron/ I didn't know
maybe he catches little girls in the
parks and rips open their behinds
with steel rods/ I can not decide
what he might have done I
know every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes every 10 minutes
I bought the paper
looking for the announcement
there has to be an announcement
of the women's bodies fond
yesterday the missing little girl
I sat in a restaurant with my
paper looking for the announcement
a young man served me coffee
I wondered did he pour the boiling
coffee on the woman because she was stupid
did he put the infant girl in
the coffee pot because she cried too much
what exactly did he do with hot coffee
I looked for the announcement
the discover of the dismembered
woman's body
victims have not all been
identified today they are
naked and dead/some refuse to
testify girl out of 10 is not
coherent/ I took the coffee
and spit it up I found an
announcement/ not the woman's
bloated body in the river floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/ not the baby
broken on the floor/

"there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands and lovers with no
immediate cause"
I spit up I vomit I am screaming
we all have immediate cause
every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes
every 10 minutes
every day
women's bodies are found
in alleys and bedrooms/at the top of the stairs
before I ride the subway/buy a paper of drink
coffee from your hands I must know
have you hurt a woman today
did you beat a woman today
throw a child cross a room
are the little girl's pants in your pocket
did you hurt a woman today
I have to ask these obscene questions
I must know you see
the authorities require us to
establish
immediate cause
every three minutes
every five minutes
every ten minutes
every day

- Ntozake Shange, translated by unknown, original here.

Comments

[privacycat.livejournal.com]

Eh. Important subject matter, but I don't feel like this is that effective.

[aria-muse.livejournal.com]

agreed

[somerled.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's my tendency to zero in on the numbers, but I find the three-five-ten minute device too glib, and for me it has the opposite effect it intends.

If the statistic covers the whole world, then something like 0.000008% of women are assaulted per day. This is the first thing that comes to mind when I read "every three minutes" — I guess I have been jaded by the telethon "every minute a child dies" style gimmickry fading stars always use to sell charities.

I feel like a jerk making this comment, as violence against women is an important social issue, but statistical devices in poems just leave me cold.

[lightup-tea.livejournal.com]

I'm a woman, and I agree. I think Shange hit the right notes in for colored girls who have considered suicide. I thought that book/play was evocative and well-crafted. But this poem is sloppy and stunted by its emotion. She hasn't really translated her emotion into poetry, if that makes sense.

[lemurstew.livejournal.com]

I have to agree as well. This poem could be so strong without the author beating me over the head with numbers; it's not a technique I'm fond of in any writing, much less poetry.

I would like ot see one or two other translations of this before I make a judgement on the poem itsef, however. I'd like to see how different translators interpret the numbers and the poem as a whole.

[jumpingdancing.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I think this was incredible. The stunted feeling actually seemed right to me, gave it an air of desperation and paranoia. (Not to say that this subject matter is overrated, it's just a feeling that I can relate to. Maybe I am just batshit insane.)

[bellvampress.livejournal.com]

I think the style fits the subject matter rather well. I like how she isn't afraid to go into her delusions.

[suhit-kelkar.livejournal.com]

I think you're among the few here who actually understood this.

[mahoganylips.livejournal.com]

I love it. This is what the concept of "rape culture" feels like.

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

this part really got to me:

before I ride the subway/buy a paper of drink
coffee from your hands I must know
have you hurt a woman today
did you beat a woman today
throw a child cross a room
are the little girl's pants in your pocket
did you hurt a woman today

[spence137.livejournal.com]

Psh. I thought that it was very powerful.

[tom-sizemore.livejournal.com]

Jesus Christ.

If somebody wrote a poem that incessantly quoted statistics about how often a black person commits a crime in American, portrayed the unease this caused in the narrator towards every black person she saw, and furthermore implied that this somehow justifies violent retaliation against black people in general, then that person would be dismissed as a paranoid genocidal maniac.

The fact that it's okay to do that with men is a demonstration of the political correctness of hating men.

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

THIS, coming from "tom sizemore"?!

LO-fucking-L.