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Poet’s Corner at the Asia-Pacific Conference: Part III

As many of you will know by now, ISSTD’s very own poetry group – ‘Poet’s Corner’ provided a fantastic presentation as part of the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference in November 2021. This year, each month in ISSTD News, we have been publishing those poems for your enjoyment. This is the last of that installment, but we hope to continue to bring you poetry regularly. In the meantime, please enjoy these poems by ISSTD Poet’s Corner members Ericha Scott, Sally Wood and Warwick Middleton.

Please note that Warwick’s poem has been previously published in Attachment-New Directions in Psychotherapy, February 2021. This is reprinted with the kind permission of Phoenix Publishing House.

All photos in this edition are courtesy of Shutterstock.

For more information about ISSTD’s Poet’s Corner, including how to join, see the July 2021 edition of the ISSTD News https://news.isst-d.org/isstd-poets-corner-seeking-new-members/


DIMENTIONAL PHOTO (October 5, 2021) 

By Ericha Scott

Stained with fixative 

Lost or packed away 

I still search for that photo 

For memories of your touch 

and your breath 

in the silver emulsion 

that shiny, cold, flat dimensional space 

to remember how you matched my heartbeat 

the moon’s energetic pull 

and ocean tides 

How your skin smelled like fresh earth after the rain 

and how you blushed when you proposed on one knee, in front of your friends 

in that dark, dank café
Such a public gesture for such a private man
in the cafe, my Taj Mahal, where our love was enshrined and I have no photographs of you 

It was not your fault my love, nor mine
that dinged wooden chair where I sat, felt like a throne what I wanted to photograph, cannot be seen
by the eyes or a lens 

Your love for me remains more tangible than a photograph 

held in my hand under the gaze of my loop. 

I am an old woman now,
and I have not forgotten the undeveloped film our heartbeats
your touch
and the smell of your skin. 


BATHING THE CHILDREN 

By Sally Wood

“I never wash them,
just let them sit in the tub until they splash clean”. 

She pulls at her skirt,
“I can’t wash myself either. Touching myself, naked … I’m not making sense”. 

I can see the sense. The knot in my stomach spreads to my throat. 

She talks rapidly, as if to bypass the meaning. “It’s very strange,
I feel safer sleeping under the bed”. 

“Why safer”? 
I breathe gently. 

She wrinkles her forehead, shuts her eyes,
says in a tiny voice, “Because then Daddy wouldn’t find me he would only find my sister”. 

Her eyes fly open, round, staring.
“I didn’t say that. It was a dream”. 


HEY LITTLE BOY

By Warwick Middleton

“We’ve looked at the many and looked at the few…
Hey little boy was the guilty one, you?
We can see the sweat upon your skin.
Put up a hand and confess to your sin…”

“Everyone who is looking will agree,
I can see that you did it, so don’t you lie to me…
You can choose to leave the truth untold,
But your silence speaks to the lie you have told…”

“The mistruth is an evil that you hid…
No one here will defend what you did…”
A hundred eyes and a withering stare…
A child alone in speechless despair…

It is so easy to be mindless and senseless…
He stood alone, silent, and defenceless…
Conflicted loyalties and mounting tolls…
The stare of a hundred eyes and fifty souls…

He silently mouthed the words – “Life’s a bitch”.
There is no thanks for not being a snitch…
A hundred eyes, including those that looked away…
And there were many that had nothing to say…

So he wiped a tear from his face,
Shunned, exposed and in disgrace.
They moved away to give him space.
“Hey little boy you don’t belong in this place!”

He wrapped up his bruises and quietly walked away…
He wrapped up his bruises and quietly walked away…

Thirty more years, and he had found a way…
To find the facts and not delay,
To speak for those without a voice,
Whose lives contained, but little choice.

For a time he spoke out, but then,
Driven by fear, they came for him again…
“We need you to retract what you say.
You are leading our colleagues seriously astray!”

“You need to comply and seek to atone,
Otherwise, you will be completely alone,
With no right to be in this place,
Cast out and in total disgrace…”

“We’ve looked at the many and looked at the few…
Hey little boy was the guilty one, you?
We can see the sweat upon your skin.
Put up a hand and confess to your sin…”

They threatened his truth and his career…
His eyes met theirs and he sensed their fear…
“I’m not sure that I can feel the love…
Do you have any evidence of what you accuse me of?”

“We are not here to debate what you believe,
Whatever craziness that you conceive…
You once almost belonged to our fraternity,
And now you can rue this for all eternity…”

“I am not here to criticize or to preach…”
From somewhere within, the little boy found speech…
“Leaving aside the hubris and the pacts,
All I ask is that you look at the facts…”

He spoke of what he believed and of what he knew,
He laid before them what he held to be true…
Clearly he did not know his place,
For their silence enveloped the remaining space.

“A wasted career – so sad, so sad…
We’ve heard enough – we think you’re mad!”
There was no further time to build rapport, 
When as one, they rushed for the door…

“We’ve looked at the many and looked at the few…
Hey little boy was the guilty one, you?
We can see the sweat upon your skin.
Put up a hand and confess to your sin…”

Truth, be it known, is so often packaged for the minds of those who have yet to take the risk to live, and then snuffed out before it has any chance to grow. Truth is forged in hell, tempered by pain and is no friend of any oppressor.

“We’ve looked at the many and looked at the few…
Hey little boy was the guilty one, you?”
He spoke of what he believed and of what he knew,
He laid before them what he held to be true…