I write about rape a lot now. 
My first book is about rape 
and so is the novel I finished last year. 
But I couldn’t write about sexual abuse in grad school

because being there required me to avoid thinking about it. 
I had to normalize abuse so I wouldn’t 
walk into the English department screaming. 

It’s incredible how an institution 
can make it impossible for students to have certain thoughts.
So much violence in that, so much power and control, 
so sinister, so invisible. 

Most of my friends from grad school have stopped writing poetry.
I have, too. 

This is the exception; usually I write prose. 
When I have truth to speak
I want to fucking speak it. 

And grad school taught me that poetry 
was not a place to be straightforward, 
was not a place where I could be heard at all 
I guess this poem proves them wrong. 

(Look who’s got gravitas now, motherfuckers.
I’ve really been wanting to say that.) 

My friends were brilliant poets.
They still are, even if they stopped writing.
I’m rereading their theses, looking for lines
to quote to you, to prove
how good they were. 

Who else feels the plumb line drop?
That’s a line I like. 

Because memory does not fall away as plainly as we want,
because it breathes,
I like that, too. 

Of course memory breathes, here it is
breathing. 

There were certain things we never talked about 
at school. It wasn’t just the creepy professor.
We didn’t put it together until last week
that all five of us were assigned teaching assistantships
for our first-year funding
which means that all the boys except for one
were given grants: no responsibilities,
just money, no strings attached.
They didn’t have to grade papers; we did.
The funding, we were told,
was merit-based. 

Something we did talk about at the time
was how fucked up it was 
that the boys decided to stop commenting on our poems 
in the middle of thesis workshop.
They explained that they wanted
to watch basketball instead.
When we told our professor
what was going on, he shrugged.
I can’t make them comment
if they don’t want to, he said.
Of course he could have made them comment!
It was the only course requirement.
It was the whole point of workshop
and he was the professor.

Imagine if we’d studied
at a school that valued our lives.
I have a feeling
more of us would still be writing.

Amy Berkowitz is the author of Gravitas (Éditions du Noroît / Total Joy, 2023) and Tender Points (Nightboat Books, 2019). Her writing and conversations have appeared in publications including Bitch, The Believer, BOMB, and Jewish Currents. Her work has received support from the Anderson Center at Tower View, This Will Take Time, Small Press Traffic, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She lives in San Francisco, where she’s working on a novel and a nonfiction project. More at amyberko.com.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) was born in Rome and lived most of her life in Naples. She apprenticed under her father, the artist Orazio Gentileschi, whose influence is particularly evident in her early works. By 1630 she had settled in Naples and established her own studio. She was one of the city’s most important artists and strongly influencing the Neapolitan art scene.