This poem symbolizes for me the painful battle that human beings absolutely need to resolve within our own hearts and as a world community if girls are to have the opportunity to be considered equal partners in every culture. I don’t think equality will ever happen for any of us if we are viewed through a sexual prism used to dominate. This poem was written to honor the girls and women written about in a startling book titled, Half the Sky which was also a documentary on PBS. The gang rape in India, and its necessary newsworthiness will hopefully be a tipping point to help in this movement for equality. That girl riding a bus…it should break everyone’s heart to action when they hear that story. It would be lovely if the only struggle remaining for all women was how to break the glass ceiling.

The petition read
Worst place to be a woman
Funny, my mind cannot
Narrow down one place
Where that would be

Raped by six men
On a bus no less
As if private rape
Isn’t awful enough
Hate violated this girl to death

No doctor would treat her
While Hippocrates absent
At the unsuccessful labor
Of her third baby at 23
Poverty dictated this girl to death

A dirty unskilled scalpel
To mutilate her desire
For what she had never known
Her mother holding her hand
Ignorance bled this girl to death

The hands of her father
In fervent obedience to
One dogma which veiled
Her to a silence she couldn’t keep
Religion beat this girl to death

Strangers, one by one
Getting what they paid
To have, the look of virginity
Her blood carrying a virus
Desire giving this girl to death

So many places, too many girls
Never to be women
Our silence puts another
To death every minute
And all I do is sign
Another petition