Riverflesh Response

The references Marriott makes to the female person and violence reminds me of the systematic ways that violence towards female bodies is put into practice during war and conquests. The connection between childbirth and the female person in Marriott's poem makes the reader pay attention to the affect childbirth has on the female body. The lines, "her spine wracked/ Her knees bleeding on the path of snow/ Beneath a calamitous dream of creation", evoke the physical exertions we associate with birth. The females spine being "wracked" by the immense pain of the babies body pushing against her back, the imagery of blood and a creation/baby that comes from the complete destruction of the vagina. The forced regulation of birth and rape along with this "calamitous" process is made even more devastating. Birth is sacred. Women's bodies are sacred. The violent invasion of this by an oppressor is the "deformity" or "crippled alien" that Marriott speaks of in his piece. Because this violence is still present through the child. The generational trauma and impact that this atrocity "birthed" is "re-birthed" or "reincarnated" in that child and their children and beyond. This process is similar to the way once natural ecologies are invaded and violence is prepetuated to the land and the ecosystems around it that space will never be the same ever again. You will always find traces of the distress left behind.