The Amazon of Avignon

from Out With Lanterns, a daily poetry practice

Every five seconds a woman is brainwashed 
to think she is responsible for what transpired.
She is told to not blame him, to understand his perspective, 
to try to see how bad he feels, how hard this is for him too,
how he didn’t mean to do it, how he’s under so much pressure.

She watched her mother make every excuse for the man 
who knocked her down in anger. The daughter who heard the 
furniture flying came running in, shouting, Hell no. Not my mom!
Except the daughter was brainwashed too and didn’t want 
her father to feel too guilty for losing his temper like that.
She’d been told so many times that it’s hard for men, you know. 

Centuries of this spell was just broken by a heroine in Avignon.
Giselle is her name, and she was brutalized by men, but not ashamed. 
She stood tall, declared that it’s those men who should be blamed, 
shunned, ostracized, excommunicated, punished. In that moment, 
millions of women around the world began to snap out of their trances. 
Word has it, a few of them have already said No More, walked out.