Resurrection, Joan Snyder

you cannot wear a red dress
when rape and murder have sewn it
so must document it piece it into
sequenced panels that recount violence
disproportionately wrought against
girls and women with a didactic hand
you must remand each newspaper story
to the custody of our view cut them
to scraps paste them into collage thusly
to make a mosaic of massacre
so we might measure ourselves
with a pattern to discomfit us you must
wield red in gash-like strokes slashing
accounts of each attack graffitiing
the graphic details of each crime
you must believe if you array events
in this way we might arrive
on the other side of night the final
canvasses you paint opening
unto blue and yellow will be
the equal of light and day will become
the resurrection possible in art if not
in life this narrative arc you have arranged
for us to behold this arraignment
where savagery is not every time
a given not every time given
the closing argument