Topmost Branches

You advertised for a lapdog

and did not know what to do

when a timber wolf arrived

and rang at the front door.

 

You wanted a sun shower,

but received a deluge.

you imagined a dim bulb

hiding in a back closet

but contracted a lightning storm.

You painted a silk rose

but received a living, breathing,

ravenous forest sheltering

weak things in its topmost

branches, and suffering no fools

to live in its excesses.

 

You wrote the description

for a lackey, and gave it to

a scientist, who promptly

ate it for breakfast with strong coffee

and a Danish on the side;

you pictured a fainting princess

and got Athena and her shield

and her brain, too.

 

You specified, eyes down,

towards the ground; walk 2 paces

behind any man, and stay:

quiet, quiet, quiet.

You forgot that silence

is the nemesis of the poet.

You needed someone nice

to shred documents and erase

your trespasses, but you got

a novelist writing you into

the perfect revenge scene.

 

You were hoping for someone

more timid

than our ancestors watching us

from sideways worlds

and other dimensions,

but I am my mother’s daughter,

and I answer to her and all our sisters

and grandmothers and the teachers

who believed in us

when nobody else would.

 

You wanted your puppet;

you asked for your mouthpiece,

but instead, you got me.

Author's Note

for all strong women everywhere being targeted in the backlash: the murdered, the disappeared, the displaced, the fired, the forced out, the impoverished

picture is my own

Reviews

[Jibey]

A powerful message that makes its point with panache. No wasted words, tightly constructed, a wonderful verbal cut and thrust. Great!