MY QUESTIONS FOR ANY WOMAN WHO HAS ESCAPED FROM HUMAN TRAFFICKING

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Advertising campaigtn by Greg Wong for Restore NYC - Awareness for Sex-Trafficked Survivors

In honor of Restore NYC and all places of haven.

                                will you learn to love your skin again
                                 now scarred and scared
                                will the memory in your muscles
                                  relearn how to let go in trust
                                will your eyes come to understand
                                  that your tears
                               your weeping, your sobbing
                                 are prayers releasing your heart from horror
                             will your feet discover again the way
                                 the way a woman walks into life each day
                                and, finally, will your sacred breasts and womb
                                                realize again how they temple your soul
                                these are the questions only you can answer
                                                with a life that came back from the dead

                                             

Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S. published her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless in 2015 (Press 53).  She has published numerous poems in Spiritus, Commonweal, First Things, and Sojourners. One of her poems appeared in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recover for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and one in Down to the Dark River: Contemporary Poems about the Mississippi, edited by Philip C. Kolin and Jack B. Bedell.  She lives in Corpus Christi, Texas and she is also a spiritual advisor.

THE PAINTED FACES

by Vidya Panicker

It was business as usual at brothel 59 in Delhi's GB Road, which houses more than 4,000 sex workers. What was unusual on the night of June 23 was the deliberate gait of Sameer Tyagi, a regular client of this brothel. Sameer appeared a bit jaded, busy on the phone, scanning the faces of about 20 odd garishly painted faces of women as they waited around for the next deal. It was 10pm, humid and a Bollywood number was playing loudly. —Anasuya Basu, Daily O, July 3, 2015; Image: Oil painting of a prostitute from Lahore's Red Light District, by Iqbal Hussain. Source: The Express Tribune (Pakistan) Blogs.

Here, and there,
the women behind the curtains
do not strip for you.

Through the folds of their
saree, and the pinched
fabric of their blouse
you occasionally catch a glimpse
of a sagging breast
or a tummy with overlapping stretch marks.

Foreplay:
you ask the one you choose.

She smirks at you
with her betel red lips
which she wipes with her palm,
pinches out two condoms from a tray,
lifts her saree and skirt up in a swift motion
and spread her tired legs on you.

Your desperate self is ready
needing no foreplay, apparently.
You lay back, relax
imagine the shudders
are a jolly lorry ride to Ladakh
or something better
while she works on you.

In about two minutes, or less
you zip up your pants
and walk out of the door.
Someone else quickly moves in
for his turn.

The painted face smirks again.

There is a daily quota;
a number signified
by the missing condoms on the tray
and later, she would run
like the rest of them—

Run home
to a sleeping child or a drunk husband
or a pimp who smacks his lips
but more often,
just to pee, and to cry out loud when the warm salty
liquid touches the bruises
that are never left to heal.


Based in the God's own country of Kerala, Vidya Panicker’s poems have appeared in The Feminist Review, So to Speak, Shot Glass Journal, One sentence Poetry, Three Line poetry, Aberration Labyrinth, Bangalore Review, and 4and20 Poetry.

ALTERNATIVE FUNDING

by David Subacchi

Many students are secretly turning to sex work to fund basic living costs while at university, a study has found. Research by Swansea University shows one in 20 students has worked in the sex industry while studying for a degree, and men are more likely to do so than women. Students are involved in everything from prostitution and escorting to stripping and internet work, the Student Sex Work Project report found. —The Guardian, March 27, 2015; Photo source: Metro.

Education is not an optional extra
So if you can’t afford the fees
You’re under an obligation
To explore alternative funding

Why pay expensive rent
For conventional accommodation
When you could live quietly
In a van parked on campus

This may interfere with social life
And there would be trouble if discovered
But you would have more time to study
So a calculated risk is worth taking

Like working in the sex industry
To provide essential income
This could finance the purchase
Of text books and extra tuition

It may enrage the family
And lose you many friends
But respectability is a luxury
When means don’t match the ends

Then there is the more direct approach
Towards separated parents
Who look too solvent on paper
Suggest a quick divorce

In order to enable state aid
Also there’s crowdfunding
A kind of on line begging
That everybody’s doing

Lastly don’t forget you can always
Take out even more loans
With no intention of paying
In a learning process we call defaulting.


David Subacchi is a 59 year old former senior civil servant living in North Wales. He is of Italian origin and also writes in Welsh. He studied at the University of Liverpool and Cestrian Press has published two collections of his English poetry First Cut (2012) and Hiding in Shadows (2014).