"I could step off the end of this pier

but I've got shit to do…"

Ani Difranco

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

...

i bought the paper

looking for the announcement

the discovery of the dismembered woman's body

the victims have not all been identified

today they are naked and dead

refuse to testify

one girl out of 10's not coherent

i took the coffee & 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 & lovers

with no immediate cause"

i spit up i vomit i am screaming

we all have immediate cause

every 3 minutes

every 5 minutes

in alleys & bedrooms

at the top of the stairs

before i ride the subway

buy a paper

drink coffee

i must know

have you hurt a woman today

did you beat a woman today

throw a child across a room

are the lil girl's panties in your pocket

did you hurt a woman today

i have to ask these obscene questions

the authorities require me to

establish

immediate cause

every three minutes

every five minutes

every ten minutes

every day

--Ntozake Shange, 'With No Immediate Cause'

"Healing may not be so much about getting better,

as about letting go of everything that isn't you -

all of the expectations, all of the beliefs -

and becoming who you are"

Rachel Naomi Remen

"Fan fiction is the way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary

myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk."

Henry Jenkins-Director of Media Studies, Massachussetts Institute of Technology