Two Poems by Atma Frans

Atma Frans

Atma Frans’ poetry won first prize in Quagmire Magazine’s Poetry Contest, second in Muriel’s Journey Prize and in SCEWS’s Beachcombers Contest, and was nominated for the (Canadian) National Magazine Award. Her work has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, TNQ, FreeFall, Prairie Fire Magazine, Obsessed with Pipework, and Lighthouse Literary Journal, among others.

Because You Are A Woman

you drop your daughter off at preschool / pick up milk and eggs / clean the dishes / leaf through the morning paper / read the sentencing for today’s rapist

like you always do since you moved to this new country

violent offenders out so soon / regardless of the risk to the public / the public—you / a woman / sentenced to life / nightmares as vivid as then / fear against your throat / each time you walk alone

a defense lawyer will use this against you

because you’re thirty / thirteen / braid your hair / cut it in a bop / trust a delivery man / sleep with the window open / return a book to the library in a dress / arms bare in the evening air / wear lacy undies

he’ll say you were asking for it

it meaning / to be thrown on the dirt / fucked / sticky fingers spidering all over your body

you’re a woman, asking for it

it / is not about sex

Male Gaze

After Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

They stare back at me as they stared back at him, their bellies, breasts and thighs displayed on tablecloths. All of it on offer but for the lips which are thin strokes, locking away kisses and the warm wetness of a tongue. While they were being sliced into cubes and pyramids, did the women hide within themselves—as I used to do when men’s eyes undressed my body?

I picture the women afterwards, in front of mirrors. With cream and cotton balls they remove the masks they wore for him. Rushing, they pull on coats. Shoes clack on cobbled streets. The night now past its darkest, the last star fading. At a bakery, just open, they fill their arms with baguettes. They tear off ends and laugh, stuff warm bread into their mouths, lick crumbs from lips, this moment theirs alone—as it was mine the times I woke at dawn before the world reached for me. Barefooted, I padded through the house. Neither woman nor mother then, I looked for myself—in photographs, drawers and the gaps between the floorboards. But all I found was my silence.