by Theresa Rodriguez

I lay upon the table and as I woke
I knew a part of me was taken. What
You took thus bled and quivered. Go, invoke
Your party loyalty as I am cut
And mutilated. Something so unseen
Is threatening and fearful to your power!
What I think inside me is between
My life and your control. And every hour
You undertake to hurt me makes me strong,
Stronger and more courageous. That I am
Mere human brings the pangs of pain along
With all your machinations. But you damn
Yourself in rich depravity. You kill
But cannot ever win against my will!

* * *

 

Winner of the 3rd Place Adult Award in FoFG’s 2019 Poetry Contest

Theresa Rodriguez is the author of Jesus and Eros: Sonnets, Poems and Songs. She also has put together a chapbook of 37 sonnets which is available as an ebook on amazon.com. She is a classically-trained singer and voice teacher who has written for Classical Singer magazine.

 

Judge’s comment: Ms. Rodriguez exposes the atrocity of organ harvesting, which is the on-demand killing of living Falun Gong practitioners, who have committed no crime, for the sale of their organs. We learn over the course of the poem that the narrator is the soul of a Falun Gong practitioner killed for her organs. We learn that she has grown only more powerful when her human flesh has been taken from her and that the communist authorities may grow rich with money but also increasingly damn themselves with their depravity. It is a profound lesson distilled in a burst of enjambed lines that turn out to form a classic Shakespearean sonnet.