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This writing was accepted for publication
in the 84 page perfect-bound issue...
cc&d magazine (v215)
(the December 2010 Issue)
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Enriched Poetry - collection book
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Safe Words

Brooke Bailey

I help you with the heavier pieces of equipment, hold the camera
while you figure out the angling, ready to document the infliction
of pain, waist training, rooms being transformed into dungeons.
I want to stop you and point out that in your books on fetish,
women are stretched out in their leather, awaiting instruction—
you don’t see them being held up by the throats, faces red
from strangulation.

I remember being hit in the bedroom, and so did my jaw
for days afterward. I didn’t have any bruises but
remembered all the women I’d known who had, women I let
walk away without asking about them. I asked to be hit
but I know they hadn’t. I remember how much it hurt my partner
to hit me, how it hurt him when I flinched almost
every time I looked at him.

After the rape I wanted to be hit, if I had to have sex, I wanted
to be reminded that sex was poisonous. I wonder, now, how many women
into BDSM have really enjoyed having someone hurt them.

I would have never stood for zippers made of clothes pins being
ripped from my flesh, or being flogged with studded leather but
I didn’t realize that until we tried to work through our pain together,
your hand around my neck, my mouth around your manhood
while bile rose up in my throat like hate

and I realized I couldn’t do any of it. My mind was wrapped
around abuse and your mind was wrapped around fetish
and my body fell back on the bed, angry and tired
of being forced to act out all the things that caused me mental anguish.

I’m only here today to help you, to try to remember that once
I loved you as a friend and as an artist
but looking at the content of your photographs, looking at these women

my body wants to break the equipment,
my body wants to protest.



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