Thread: The Rape

The leering wind gropes the trees;
Petticoat leaves ripped asunder
And limbs flail wildly in panic,
The deep groans silenced by the
Smack of the thunder

Its jaws gnash the brittle branches,
Its Tongue swirls the cracks,
Its calloused hands throttle
the trunk and helpless fingers snap
Like twigs in a gale.

Breath fades;
Softly The hair flutters in the calm of the breeze,
Naked, bitterly cold and ravished.
Silently spread*lying lifeless*
Face down in the damp earth

As Winter freezes solid the dew on the brow,
Quietly as it stalked the foe drifts
Unfettered into the dark
Of the cold night sky.

Wow. Your carefully chosen words give this poem an ambiguous quality. Words like "flail" and "gnash" incite such fear that I almost forgot that I was reading about a storm. If this was your aim, then very well done, sir. I have to give you credit, or "props" (as we say in the states) for having the courage to use this title. My only comment is that the word "tongue" in the second stanza is capitalized.

This does have an almost palpable violence about it that closely mirrors a rape, and is stunning, in fact. Well done, there.

My only nits are that the focus, the who, isn't clear to me. The first stanza tells us it's the trees, but the second and third stanza seems to switch to a singular victim, and in the third S I think you need to make it clearer who is lying lifeless and facedown. However, that's only my view and others may not have a problem with that aspect.

The first two stanzas are captivating and, as said in the post above, give a violent feeling that fulfills the title nicely. The last two stanzas lost me. The tone and pacing and imagery seems to change and I didn't feel like the stanzas captured the appropriate feeling needed after the beginning. I realize that's a vague comment, but I'm finding it hard to articulate what it is I'm thinking here.

Thanks for your comments. I initially intended to write a poem to try and capture the violence of a storm I was caught in one evening. But I decided, once I'd developed the idea of a rape, that I would go switch the imagery around to leave an ambiguity as to the victim or scene being described. Hence after the 'fingers snap like twigs in a gale' the human imagery converges with the tree image. By the end, I wanted to leave the idea of the metaphorical/actual event either in doubt or in tandem with each other. By the way, rape's a strong subject I know, so hope I didn't offend anyone...