by MaryLisa DeDomenicis
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AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News. |
I was only sixteen
when my best friend’s
father stuck his hands up
my shirt and his tongue
down my throat.
I was terrified to tell her
yet somehow she knew
so I didn’t have to.
After my best friend’s father
I never went braless.
Never mind I was donned
in a thick crewneck sweatshirt—
He saw something
He wanted.
You don’t even have to be
beautiful.
You only have to be
a girl.
Editor’s note: The New Verse News is honored to continue to host, in the wake of the news at Cornell, a series of courageous memoir poems.
A Best of the Net and Best New Poets (2026) nominee and NJSCA fellow, MaryLisa studied poetry at Stockton University. A three-time Pushcart nominee, her poems have won two Murphywriting awards, a Toni Brown Memorial Scholarship Award, and a Stillwaters Woman’s Words Chapbook competition. She’s had work published by Rattle, The American Journal of Poetry, and Mudfish, among others and her poems can be found in several anthologies including most recently Screaming Beyond Borders, a Woman Scream Series.