Little Adulteress
Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow

Not offered the decency of a bog or desert,
waist shrouded like a veiled face, head like
the tossed football that the Lindow woman’s
served as, she was struck not thrice but many times

as stone by stone they covered her with modern hate,
her oak a flat black gun to cut through the thorns
that tried to grow around her, a place for the tears
from that first journey to course down. To resurrect

this tanned Lazarus, raped baby, you’ll have to dig
much deeper — not enough to shroud her, murmur
decent things above the roar of stadium crowds,
hold her hand as she starts her long journey into art.