By Shoba Narayan
"Do you know why the girl died?"
Asked my Krav Maga instructor,
to the fists and cocks facing him.
"Because she trusted that
a man would protect her."
He was talking, of course,
of the gang-rape on a
moving bus.
prompting picket lines,
puppet strings
around prisoner necks.
The bullet train glides
amidst sand dunes.
The lady listening to jazz
asks if I am someone she knows,
before falling out into the grateful sand,
which wraps her body in gossamer and pearls,
before spitting her out into a New York subway line
where she practices Krav Maga on the men who brutalized her.