Poetry by Amanda Hawk

                 ​John Brighenti CC



In Broad Daylight 

As a small town teenager, 
we walked the sidewalks in packs,
huddled in front of the grocery store,
dangled from the school yard monkey bars,
or grouped in the corner of the local pizza shop.
  
We challenged authority 
in our impatient tapping fingertips,
indestructible glaring over sunglasses,
and the sarcastic prose lingering on our lips.

At night, my friends and I snuck out 
to roam the street edge 
and slunk down to the school;  
clustered together to plan 
our exit in a trail of constellations.
  
My classmate, Angie, lived on the outskirts
with her freshly divorced mother
and punk rock sister. 
As a little girl, she smiled every day
and mastered the monkey bars.

As a teenager, she knew the number of steps
from her front door to the school
while she sauntered along the road 
and stared down headlights 
for an escape route.
    
One day, someone did stop for Angie,
It was the middle in the afternoon, 
when she walked home from school.  

Grown men tried to pull her 
into their van 
and barrel down the freeway 
in broad daylight.
  
In a battle of teeth and nails,
Angie got away 
and found safety 
in a farmhouse and police sirens,
but left her invincibility
like a loose jacket in their hands.
 
Her name was a trap 
upon our mouths the next day, 
and Angie became a lesson 
for us teenage girls. 
We sat in weeks of school assemblies 
about strangers, safety and our frailty.
  
Angie never came back to school.





Ripe Strawberries

Once upon a summer,
     a girl 
ripe in strawberries
and deep blue ruffles
confined to her home
with the babysitter-
           
                     a wolf.

A girl in pigtails
    and spaghetti straps
dangling before 
the boy
                     a high schooler
in thick framed eyeglasses.
He plucks her curiosity
    with
                
                      savage palms.

She forgets
    about closed bathroom doors,
best friends on front porch waiting,
                     and the feeling of calluses
                     biting skin under
                     loose straps.

Girl
    rises
from six or seven years old
                     and the dress
remains wadded in her closet
with faded strawberries,
the metallic smell
                            of his breath,
                        
                            and his name
crumpled in the front pocket.

She grows 
     into a woman
that will not know
            
                   the rasp of a half-starved tongue
                   and its slow motion
                   along her thighs.

A woman
that will not see 
                
                    snap jaw muzzle fingers

in the hands of all her lovers
ready to 
                    pull her apart
one button at a time.

She fragments that summer
     from her memory-
                    deletes the thick rimmed glasses,
                    withdraws the wolf hands,
                    erases the deep blue ruffled dress,

     and with a survival needle
     and silent thread,
sews herself back together.
She pulls out the letters of his name
                    like jagged teeth
and stitches him up in the word
                
                     predator.





Amanda Hawk lives in Seattle, Washington between the roaring planes and concrete jungle.  Her poetry has been featured on Rain City Poetry Slam's Instagram and an honorable mention on marylambertsings.com.  Recently, she has had poems accepted at borrowed solace, The Raven Review and Drunk Monkeys.
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