Every 3 minutes a woman is beaten. Every five minutes a woman is raped. Every ten minutes a lil girl is molested. Yet I rode the subway today. I sat next to an old man who may have beaten his old wife 3 minutes ago or 3 days. 30 years ago he might have sodomized his daughter, but I sat there cuz the young men on the train might beat some young women later in the day or tomorrow. I might not shut my door fast. Every 3 minutes it happens, some woman’s innocence rushes to her cheeks, pours from her mouth like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn apart. Their mouths, menses red & split. Every three minutes a shoulder is jammed through plaster and the oven door, chairs push thru the rib cage, hot water or boiling sperm decorate her body. I rode the subway today & bought a paper from a man who might have held his old lady onto a hot pressing iron. I don’t know. Maybe he catches lil girls in the park & rips open their behinds with steel rods. I can’t decide what he might have done; I only know every 3 minutes, every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes, so I bought the paper, looking for the announcement, the discovery of the dismembered woman’s body. The victims have not all been identified. Today they are naked and dead, refuse to testify. One girl out of 10’s not coherent. I took the coffee & spit it up. I found an announcement; not the woman’s bloated body in the river floating, not the child bleeding in the 59th street corridor, not the baby broken on the floor. There is some concern that alleged battered women might start to murder their husbands & lovers with no immediate cause.
I spit up. I vomit. I am screaming. We all have immediate cause. Every 3 minutes, every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes, every day. Women’s bodies are found in alleys & bedrooms, at the top of the stairs. Before I ride the subway, buy a paper, drink coffee, I must know: have you hurt a woman today? Did you beat a woman today? Throw a child across a room? Are the lil girl’s panties in yr pocket?
Did you hurt a woman today? I have to ask these obscene questions. The authorities require me to establish immediate cause every three minutes, every five minutes, every ten minutes, every day.

"With No Immediate Cause", Ntozake Shange