Kathleen Wakeham published a small book of poetry in 1974 entitled: These feelings of Love, Life and Loneliness, just some poems. It’s a beautiful collection of poems about being a woman, living, loving, and feeling both a part of the world and separate from it. One of her poems she has written about rape, an intense monologue of an experience of violence against a woman.

A Rape

Her teeth knocked out, blood strewn around

the walls reek with pain,

while the floor is covered with tearful shredded garments

His calling was a leap of risk, from roof

to window pane through her

so a torrent of senselessness gushed.

Torn through slicing lips, gouging pits

plunging at lily bed roots

whose only self is to grow, give nutrients,

be caressed by nature’s rain drops.

Smashed beauty, brass knuckles into a fragile nose bridge

Crying, pleading, Why? Why?

But the lashing and the thrusting go on.

Only stopping after the last spill of sour creamed extermination

the stilhetto falls limp, the skull relaxes its hardened gourd.

But the blood, crying, sores, pain don’t ever seem to stop

Not stopping now or then or, it seems, ever.

Madmen and lunatics roam about

preying on the loving, the harmless

smashing glass into her vulva on a night of quietude.

Rampaging innocence, locking her mind in a padded cell

of fear, hurt, humiliation (no, you’re not a slut)

in the name of

the poor boy had a bad home and is misunderstood, forgive, understand, he’s aman and nature was only calling his natural need.

And her eyes are cloudy glass in a misty self

of voidful womanhood, talking with a tongueless mouth

and a slashed face of dazzlement — Why? Why?