A Prayer to St Bridget in her most Pagan Incarnation

Bridget let us keep our eyes and poke theirs out –

we need another word than justice

for these contests where everyone we care

about almost always loses,

we need new phrases for the way our bodies

are perceived as traps for men

to unsuspectingly get caught in and for how

we are made comply with this.

We need other words than ‘conviction’ and ‘witness’

for the surrender and regrant submission

that even successful prosecutions

entail for their victims, we need to summons

a diatribe so savage that it sounds

like our maternal ancestors howling at us

enraged at our obediences,

we need to let them shame us into resistance

whenever we are denied jurisdiction

over our own interiors, our own existences.

Yes we need sentences but more than that

we need a whole new language for the damage

that happens when some overseer or other

gets to tell us what the severed parts of our anatomies

were worth; what price a broken pelvis

an unnecessary hysterectomy,

or a decade of forced labour in a laundry

and who gets to be the judge of this?

We might need new mouths

to make it known that we won’t stand for this-

but so be it- it will take a litany of curses

harsh and vicious enough to make the judge and jury

of public opinion actually listen

we need to expose the concealed weapon

of our intelligence and not apologise for it

no matter how uncomfortable this makes things,

we need to put the power brokers on notice

that if they call our protests hysterical

we will catch them by their gullets.

We need to make it known that the days

of us putting our own eyes out are over

and that as and when it’s necessary

we will fix our sights on each and every stuffed shirt

who attempts to discuss the mitigating circumstances

that mean it was okay to hurt us,

we need a daylight court

that we can enter into whole and leave intact,

and we need words for this, women

we have lost our tongues in battle

and we need to take them back.

Sarah Clancy; Written for Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project