by Imogen Arate
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| Met Police officer Wayne Couzens has been sentenced to a whole-life term for the murder of Sarah Everard (above), in a case that sparked national outrage and calls for more action to tackle violence against women. Couzens admitted the kidnap, rape, and murder of the 33-year-old marketing executive when he appeared in court several months ago. But it was only during his sentencing that the full details of his crimes emerged. —BBC News, October 1, 2021 |
Don’t ask me to write a poem about her death
because there’ll be another before I can find
the perfect synonym that excites murders to titillate
Though I think we’ll be just fine with our hot
breath fogging up whichever screen that
protects our voyeurism as a news craze
Don’t look for nuance as there won’t be
hues apart from those that sell well
Misogyny has a target market like any
I mean do we really care about the loss
of peoples whose value we’ve decided
to debase long ago except during
their assigned celebratory terms
How else can we virtual signal without
Ah sorry #Timesup For your month
I mean Not your demise Amphitheaters
must be filled Come come we’ve broken
through the boundaries of brick-and-mortar
decades ago but bloodlust is evergreen
only thumbs ups are allowed
though we’ll deliver all the same 😉
Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses (https://poetsandmuses.com), a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published in Rigorous and The Opiate and on the Global Vaccine Poem project. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.