Poetry by Elizabeth Gade
Elizabeth Gade is a US based bisexual writer and certified peer support worker. Her lived experience of abuse and incarceration drives her to write and serve her community. She views writing as radical way to show up in the world while connecting to fellow survivors. Her poems have been published in The View Magazine, The Elevation Review, 300 Days Of Sun, Other Worldly Women Press. Find her on Instagram at @elizabethgadethepoet.
The blood came before
the rain did
the poems came before
the healing arrived
the trauma
the trauma
has always been
with it’s snapping frenzied jaws
I never belonged anywhere
the girl who thrived in chaos
prayed to god to make me anything
but dirty
daughter of eve
flesh of the original sin
the shame
the shame
that serpentine scaled spiral
ends here
In the poem "the blood came," Elizabeth Gade uses sentences that follow an accentual meter rather than the number of syllables. All the lines vary in syllable count, but the poet uses an accentual syllabic meter. In the opening couplet, lines one and two, we learn that the birth of violence came earlier than the flow of lines. The evidence points toward lines 3 and 4, where the speaker admits to writing ahead of the cure. The narrative continues within the poetry, as the evidence shows in lines five and six, with the stressor repeated as distress, trauma, trauma—the reoccurring violent situation. The speaker continues to inform us in line 7 that they have been distressed, and the turning point…