unnamed.
“It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.” ― Madeleine Albright
TW: gender-based violence
It’s hard to believe I wrote this poem over three years ago.
It popped back up in my social media memories where someone had re-posted it in response to the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings. If you’re not familiar, a man went to two spas and a massage parlor and intentionally killed seven women (six, not coincidentally, of Asian descent) and one man, because he blamed them for “lapses in his sexual purity.” He cited his "christianity” and deep spiritual convictions as the motivation behind his actions. Nevermind the fact that the way Jesus actually told people to handle “irrepressable” sinful urges they “couldn’t control” was to cut off their own body parts and throw them away—a far cry from “attack the object of your desire/temptation.” The Christ didn’t exactly mince words or leave much room for misinterpretation.
Last week, two 19-year-old twin sisters in Brooklyn were attacked by a man for rejecting his attempted advances. One of the girls was stabbed to death and died in front of her sister.
In 2018, I went on a 3-year journey of research and study in an attempt to truly and objectively approach the question of what God thinks of women, and whether women are as valued and loved by God as men.”
- Shigé Clark, “unnamed.”
In South Korea, the birth rate is plummetting as women take part in the 4B Movement, rejecting relationships with men enmasse in an attempt to fight back against the high rates of crime against women and the suffocating restraints of their allotted gender roles. Rampant crimes like violent attacks, femicide, revenge porn, stalking, and a spate of secret spy cams targeting women. Rampant crimes like the 2016 Seocho-dong public restroom murder, where a man stabbed a woman he didn’t know four times in the chest because she ignored his advances and he was “tired of being ignored by women.” The court ruled in the man’s favor. If that’s too far back for you, last year another Korean woman was killed in another public restroom, by a man who had increasingly stalked and threatened her over 3 years because she wouldn’t date him. She went to their mutual employer, as well as to the authorities, but despite a police investigation and a request to the courts for him to be detained, he was never imprisoned or given a restraining order. And then he stabbed her to death.
This is to say nothing of places like India where thousands of women are killed in marriage-payment disputes and where 1-5-year-old girls are 75% more likely to die than boys, or China where female infanticide is a recognized epidemic that has resulted in a severe lack of women in the country and where four women in 2022 were savagely beaten at a public restauraunt by a group of men because one of the women resisted one of the men’s advances—and then the government tried to cover it up.
And all this is to say nothing of my own anecdotal, personal experience.
In 2018, I went on a 3-year journey of research and study in an attempt to truly and objectively approach the question of what God thinks of women and whether women are as valued and loved by God as men—because that’s been a very real, pressing, and painful question for me throughout my life, one I was willing to hear a “no” on if that was the objective truth, and one which eventually lead to this poem.
If you aren’t familiar with Biblical text, this poem won’t make much sense to you, but that’s okay. I’m out here to call my fellow Christains to account, for the evil and pain we allow in the world and especially the ways we contribute to it, both actively and passively. That’s another hallmark of what Jesus did that we ‘christians’ like to ignore. When I shared this poem, a pastor who’s known me my entire life said it was “obviously skilled as far as construction and Biblical references,” but “where does all the anger come from?”
Happy Women’s History Month, folks. I’m tired.
unnamed.
For all of us. The uglies
and unlikeables—the Leahs of the earth, kept
for dramatic effect,
unchosen, haggled over
who must handle us. I feel it too.
You may not think I do. But
I know. And I see you, Bathshebas
praised for beauty, added to
the line, the wake
of concubines. Forgotten
in the mix of men we all call
heroes, even now. Man after
God’s own heart—and is that it,
what we say? We Tamars
and we Hagars, and we claimed—
parceled out in twelve flesh pieces, butchered
to make a point—and yet unnamed.
God, I’m tired
of this world where we would still
toss women on the doorstep to be maimed,
and raped, and call it righteous, so long
as it shields a man’s life. What of the prophet’s
potential, after all?
What might it do to his acclaim? What
of bloody Benjamin’s right
to a wife? The same,
expendable sacrifice, on the altar
of men’s squabbles with each other, while we
grovel, and shudder,
and die in the dirt
unnamed. Here,
Holy-scripted, I find
my sisters—time and again,
I know their sins. I know
they were unfaithful (that’s made plain). I know
Lot’s daughters worthy of disdain, and he
of praise. (Brave, righteous father, to offer up
his daughters in exchange
for holy cause. I’ve asked since age nine,
why he didn’t offer up
himself? But never mind,
he’s not to blame.) I know
how many times they ate
their father’s food (no detail spared)
and still I am not told
their names. Why
do you think I bear
this flame? I won’t lie
here in the sand and wait to die—
come find me, unchosen,
veiled and crouching on the road
to claim what’s mine.
Come find me,
seal, and cord, and staff, and pride, gripping
accountability
like the ankle of a coward. Try to flee. Kings
and fathers handed power
over nations, and spirits, and lives, and can’t be
trusted with children and wives. We put glory
on their brows, and swords
in their fists, and say they can’t be expected
to hold themselves
up. Back. Straight. Firm. Find me
spitting wit at wells, breaking
unwanted, unwelcome into
whitewashed houses, bathing
tears and perfume over pain,
throwing ropes from windows
over city walls, scarlet brazen, unashamed,
watching kingdoms ground down into grain.
Find me
written into history
unnamed.
Delaina Ashley Yaun González
Xiaojie Tan, 谭晓洁
Daoyou Feng, 冯道有
Hyun Jung Grant, 김현정
Suncha Kim, 김선자
Soon Chung Park, 박순청
Yong Ae Yue, 유영애
Samyia Spain
23-year-old Korean woman, unnamed
28-year-old Korean woman, unnamed
You are Beloved and named and known. Man’s mistakes and viewpoints aren’t God’s, I have to believe.
I’m thankful for your voice, Shigé. I’ve not yet learned how to channel anger and angst into creative good, but you do it so masterfully here.