Red

After a bottle of merlot in my living room
i meet a woman who talked a man out of raping her.

            She says she said to him

                        I dare you.
                      In days, I’ll have you dead.

i pictured her in that moment –

            her hair, wild, blowing into snakes
            eyes two mercurial cressets
            her warning brutal like as his urges

                        It’ll be slow.

She says she said.

                        Forensic.           Painful.

She’s annoyed the wine is gone.
She looks around for something red
tells me that upon marking her words

            his festering itch for conquest shed.

            No moral arousal on his end
            just fearful, full of her
            instead, fear full

            of grenades possessed
            by survivor riots, her warnings
stir within him

            dry bone dread.
            From his breath, he smells
            his sour spirit, his toxic head.

Her story relaxes me.
i drift into wondering –

            Where does justice go
            When assaults surpass 12-hour clocks.
            When safety visits, where do wounds rest?

i retreat, into girl pure, protected.
Together, we tuck the blood to bed.

Since the pandemic, K.R. Morrison has been searching for mermaids in a sea town in Southern California, often returning to the Bay Area for her poetry nests and to play drums for two all-female fronted rock bands – Harriot and Unicröne. Morrison is a Pushcart Nominee for her poem, “Her Altar” and still enjoys readings and podcasts for Cauldrons, her first poetry collection published by Paper Press. Alongside years spent as a writer, activist, and musician, K.R. spent 17 years as a sea captain for the teens – using creative writing and books, she worked with countless students at Galileo High School in San Francisco, earning the name “Mama Mo” with many who left her classroom armed with writing and tools for healing. Morrison continues her work in education through the juvenile hall system and online teaching. These days, Morrison drowns in an abyss of new poems that will hopefully, take the form of three separate manuscripts.