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      June 24, 2021Gods, Monsters, and Complex PTSDElizabeth Train-Brown

      Image: “Contradictions of Being” by Neena Sethia. “Gods, Monsters, and Complex PTSD” was written by Elizabeth Train-Brown for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
      I feel unraveled
      I feel like scripture
      I feel like the words of prophets
      torn apart
      translated
      retranslated
      rewritten
      spread to countries that don’t care
      what I have to say.
       
      I feel like taking out the middle man
      taking out the writer
      the pen
      the page
      burrowing my face through the undergrowth
      slithering through the cracks
      of a confession booth
      and whispering my sins
      through a mouthful of leaves.
       
      I feel like when someone drops a book
      in a bath
      and a touch of everything written in me
      circles
      the
      drain
      you can dry me
      shake your bathwater from my spine
      but I will never be the same
      and you will always know the difference.
       
      I feel like a woman’s words
          in a man’s book.
      There
      but in his voice.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the artist, Neena Sethia

      “I loved this poem because it talks so beautifully about voice and its various contradictions, language and translations and everything that gets lost in between. There are several memorable lines in this poem, but my favourite was its end: ‘I feel like a woman’s words in a man’s book. There, but in his voice.’ I think that these lines themselves encapsulate the whole painting.”

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