POETRY

 

Matters of Gender


I can't find the line between gender offense and gender defense.

Eye the sky through the glass ceiling,
balanced back like a spinning top on my swivel chair,
I hold every penny a man makes over me against his
fat forehead made vast by retreating hair and attacking years.
Plots hatched hunched over keyboard static include
releasing a 10-year copper differential over Him, lost in
a Wizard if Oz fantasy of curled toes peeking
out from the bottom of the pile of change.

Goo ice cream and Magic Shell into my mouth
while watching the soap my mother hooked me on
when I was 10, melting two guilty pleasures to claim one,
and pretending the next day around the water cooler
not to know who Vicky is and why her baby was born
with two extra toes (it means Tad's the father!)

I stare down the hairy ape dragging his knuckles behind
me at the gym before he will slink through a door I pulled wide
and waited as his testosterone level leaked out his nipples,
making wet circles on his rugby shirt.

Embrace my pores clear-faced, smear rouge in interviews
and sit comfortably, legs slick with nylons and spread.

Take too seriously marriage jokes about the
grinning groom saying he just got the best sucking off
of his life and the bride declaring she just gave
the last blowjob of hers, and scrape my brain
for more reasons why cucumbers are better than men
to parry the ancient beer versus women chants.

Wear the widest bell-bottoms I can find in every failed paring,
dictating love's details to some poor slob looking for a comfort
hole and finding a rigid triangle too afraid of getting hurt to let him be Isosceles.

Live in an apartment with a closet bedroom and a kitchenette
and hate cats.