POEM | Sequela
Show me the beauty of a body contorted by thrall.
Then, show me the thrall.
Shame is a vast word.
The girl with violence in her lap
never goes astray again.
Her face,
an unstoppable fist
of dust.
What secret suicides her suntanned lips?
She used to run rampant in palatial halls.
In service to a master who made her over in his image,
unredeemed by vacant possession.
Heredity demands an outlier,
so she became our gaudy heretic.
In our father’s house there were many rooms
but no doors.
With each new wound we wondered
at the spellcraft of our bodies.
We are not remembering the remembering.
We are palimpsests, after all.
Memory is an inconstant bedfellow
so you must learn to make space.
Hold it loosely to avoid bloodletting.
This is the first of many tests:
Learn to sleep beside the blade.
Begin by thinking of the knife
as an extension of your hand.
Not a tool or a weapon, but another, sharper
angle of your own body.
Beauty is the work of war.
The history of gender is violence.
In both countries I have called home,
rape is now a prerequisite to governance.
It has taken me half a century to realise
The call is coming from inside the house.
Lindsay Tuggle is a writer of poetry, creative nonfiction and literary fiction based in Sydney.
The poem was first published in Artist Profile Issue 70, 2025. Sequela was selected for The Best Australian Poems of 2025.
Author’s Note: Sequela was catalysed by the work of Hanna Gudjonson while we were artists-in-residence at Château d’Orquevaux. You can read more about Hanna and view her work here.
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