Jess Woolford
where began it?
this sense: safety stolen?
was it back there?
schoolyard
where boys tracked
took you down shouting
pinned arms
legs to grass
to snow
rubbed liverish lips
across your own?
or back there?
childhood home
where parents’ new friends moseyed
sons in tow?
go play
so scaled stairs to room
you and sister shared: twin
beds arm’s length apart
snicked shut the door they did
those sweaty stranger boys
crowed we’re doctors
‘n you’re our patients
no one not your parents
nor theirs
heard a thing
while on your wall
the fonz grinned
thumbs-up
or was it back there?
church basement
where village panty thief
snatched you off the line
cornered clutched you
demanding to see the thing
he called your vajee?
or was it maybe back there?
auntie’s house
where mother shucked your snowsuit
smoothed skirt
side-eyed uncle sofa-sprawled
said: remember don’t sit
on his lap
sent you seeking
cousin kin?
frantic you flapped
sidestepping his swoop some-
how seized sanctuary
in playroom
toys ten lincoln logs
battered type writer
or was it all the way back there?
ovum
where X transfixed X?
cataclysmic coupling
[beyond memory]
yes and yet
still you strain to see
just where you lost liberty
Jess Woolford
Jess Woolford is an essayist, memoirist, poet, and literary critic who lives and works on Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In addition to other publications, her poetry has appeared in The Ecological Citizen, Prairie Fire Magazine, and Contemporary Verse 2, while her life writing has been anthologized in Without Apology: Writings on Abortion in Canada and In the Company of Animals: Stories of Extraordinary Encounters. Woolford has also written for Social Politics, The Winnipeg Free Press, and The Winnipeg Review.