Perseus Academic: One Red Eye by Kirsten Dierking

In reading these poems, we experience beauty-paradoxically-as well as come to understand the complexity of the crime, its aftermath, and the relief and joy of recovery.—Roseann Lloyd

Perhaps the first full-length work of its kind, One Red Eye is an unexpected book, an intimate story of violence and survival, rape and re-birth, told in verse. In concise, candid, and understated poems, Dierking shares the brutal truth of her own rape experience, while at the same time, demonstrating the possibility of spiritual recovery from sexual assault. This is the story of a life brought to a disasterous standstill, and the subsequent acts of common kindness that allow the author to recapture hope, and move into a changed, but salvageable future. Tough and articulate, One Red Eye defies the silence and guilt that so often surrounds the crime of rape.

I Might Have Dreamed This

For a short time after

the rape, I found I could

move things. Energy birds

swarmed from my brain.

With a witch's sense

of abandoned physics,

I set dolls rolling.

Back and forth. Like a

breathing sound.

Using only my night-powered

eyes, I pushed the lamp

to the dresser's edge.

I buried the mirrors

in avalanches of freshly

laundered underpants.

I never slept.

I did all these things

lying down.

Kirsten Dierking received a bachelor's degree in International Affairs and History from the University of Colorado, and a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Hamline University. Her writing has appeared in Sing Heavenly Muse, ArtWord Quarterly, Water-Stone, and Xanadu. She lives with her husband in Saint Paul, Minnesota. This is her first published collection.