The women, the girls know.
Our story ancient. Our voices new.
They make us believe
The crime is our fault.
Men take our bodies,
Unable to resist the siren
Song of our bodies.
The song of our bodies
Does not belong to us.
Girls whom men called sirens,
Children wounded into silence,
Sing their bodies.
Sing their truths aloud.
Strongmen claim they are victims
Of the song of our bodies.
Weak men whose bodies
Are out of control.
Bodies anatomically ungoverned.
Bluster out of control.
Vanquishing other bodies—
Seas, straits, oil fields,
Mines, minds.
Strap yourselves tighter to the mast.
Now the bindings break.
Your strength offers no protection
Against the siren song of Truth.
The women. The girls. Know.
Mother Earth sings Her body,
Raped by weak men
Whose strength is measured
In violence. Did their mothers
Teach them this was fair game?
We sing our truths aloud,
Sirens flashing red:
Pull over now. Stop raping
Our minds, our bodies,
Our mothers, our daughters.
Ourselves. Loudly we sing
Our bodies to wholeness.
Weak men are broken,
No fault of ours.
Blame your wounds, not our anatomy.
Our siren song strengthens.
Our story ancient.
Our voices new.
Robin Stevens Payes is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet, storyteller, and cultural steward whose work braids ancestral memory, science, myth, and moral imagination. She is the author of the YA time-travel adventure series Edge of Yesterday and creator of [re]member the world, a multi-genre project retrieving and reweaving the silenced history of her grandmother’s flight from Ukraine’s Pale of Settlement. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, Dawn Horizons, East Sea Bards, Maryland Bards, Poetry Reviews, and Reflections. She writes about creative ethics, generational healing, and cultural repair on her Substack, Releasing Memory.
