One of our six Pushcart nominations, Ocean Vuong’s “Self-Portrait with Exit Wounds,” has won a Pushcart Prize and will be featured in the next Pushcart anthology. The poem first appeared in ASSARACUS ISSUE 08. Congratulations, Ocean!
To the One Who Raped Me by Dustin Brookshire
There are 525,600 minutes in a non-leap year. That makes 31,536,000 seconds in every year. So: 31,536,000 divided by 248,300 comes to one sexual assault every 127 seconds, or about one every two minutes.
To the One Who Raped Me by Dustin Brookshire
A Sibling Rivalry Press Chapbook
$12.00; 34 Pages
Release Date: August 7, 2012
Now Available
ISBN: 978-1-937420-20-8
$1.00 from each chapbook sold directly through SRP
will be donated the Dekalb Rape Crisis Center.
In 2006, Dustin Brookshire was raped by a former boyfriend. In the months that followed, he began writing as a means of coping with the psychological aftermath. The result is To the One Who Raped Me, a bold debut chapbook of taboo truths and the too-often unspoken that chronicles Dustin’s journey from victim to survivor.
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“Dustin Brookshire looks into the space between representation and experience and thinks about the ways in which silence and stupidity protract the long slow horror of rape. The voice is clear, cold, and ferocious, with none of the usual impulses to tidy up or make it easy on us. “What I want is impossible,” the speaker says, but what he has is this book, which manages to have the heft of a hundred books.”
- Paul Lisicky, author of Famous Builder
“To The One Who Raped Me is a poetry collection that people need to read. Brookshire takes a personal tragedy and turns it into an indispensable tool for survival, healing, and understanding.”
- Shaindel Beers, author of A Brief History of Time
“Dustin’s poems are powerful, raw, courageous and inspirational. The DeKalb Rape Crisis Center commends him for putting his feelings to paper and giving survivors a voice. We applaud his strength and determination and can’t thank him enough for generously donating $1 from each chapbook sale to the center.”
- Phyllis Miller, Executive Director, DeKalb Rape Crisis Center
“Sometimes redemption is too high a price to pay for the worst of what can happen to us and the adage ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ doesn’t apply. That said, the brute strength, the truth and beauty exhibited in Dustin Brookshire’s chapbook To The One Who Raped Me triumphs over tragedy in its ability to restore with clear language and intrepid vision another piece of the indomitable human spirit. This is a small but mighty and important book.”
- Dorianne Laux, author of Facts About the Moon
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READ AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
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Dustin Brookshire is a poet and activist who resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Dustin’s work has been honored by the Alabama State Poetry Society and Oregon Poetry Association and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poems have been published by Assaracus, Ocho, Oranges & Sardines, Shape of Box, SubtleTea, Apparatus, Ouroboros, qarrtsiluni, and other publications as well as the anthology Divining Divas: 100 Gay Poets on Their Muses (Lethe Press, 2012). Visit Dustin online at www.dustinbrookshire.com.
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Kudos to Dustin for writing about this terrible ordeal. It takes a large amount of strength to put it out there for the public. I’m working through something similar myself on my blog. I look forward to reading your book, Dustin.
Thank you, Kirsten. I’m sorry to hear that we share a similar experience. Wishing you the best.
“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” -Zora Neale Hurston
Thank you, Dustin. I have the same quote on my blog but thought it was Maya Angelou who said it. I wonder who said it first? Either way, it is definitely true for me. All my best to you.