Them/Us

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Non-binary, my daughter said to me,
reporting on her first-born’s recent speech.
They want the neuter plural pronoun – he
or she will hurt their feelings. Now I reach
for comprehension while I try to frame
my sentences so noun and verb agree.
It’s harder than adjusting to the name
they chose, but love holds flexibility.

I heard and watched and puzzled for a while,
and after weeks I asked the Internet
the meaning. Then I surveyed with a smile
the symptoms of myself – I own them yet.
When I was young subreddits didn’t play –
I thought I was alone until today.

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Super Powers

(To at Least 5 of my 6 Descendants)

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You’re passionate. I see and honor it.
You feel things deeply and coherently.
Your fast reactions are appropriate,
but not your forcefulness. Apparently
we’re fortunate; we’re anything but numb.
Though vehemence may vary by the hour,
nobody can complain you’re dull or dumb.
Your depth of sense is like a super power.

But every power needs to be controlled!
The challenge is to learn to modulate.
While waxing hot, you might engage in cold
consideration of your mental state.
Respectfully I tender this appeal:
to teach yourself to regulate your zeal.

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Alibi

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My boyfriend had bad allergies that barred
him from enjoying outdoor times, he said.
My husband’s hem’rhoids made the biking hard
and painful, so he stayed at home instead.
My children’s dad was too depressed of course,
to take them traveling or teach them craft.
My Ex thought if there hadn’t been divorce,
he wouldn’t be so bitter. He once laughed,
but soon he channeled grump curmudgeonly,
and Grandpa just won’t fly or drive that far.
His ears can’t take the cabin pressure, see,
and heel spurs don’t feel painless in a car.
For four and forty years, the man excused
himself from work and love, his spark unused.

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Another from the Old Wives

ginger ale

It’s every mother’s job to feed her young,
innate and second only to the birth,
to reproduce her heritage among
the myriad of beings on the earth.
But somehow that imperative to feed
grew viral and took over like a law.
When faced with child illness, mothers plead
for eating, though that treatment has a flaw.

In fact our bodies need to take a rest
all night, and much of daytime when we’re ill,
from processing ingestion. Vigor pressed
to metabolic tasks cannot fulfill
repair and growth and germ-defeating needs.
In illness and at midnight, food impedes.

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A Little Self Sketch

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Although we’ve been acquainted 50 years
as roommates, neighbors, mostly closest friends,
she thought my social shyness came from fears –
“You follow rules of order,” she’d contend.
And he, creative relative, long deemed
me typical of where I live. He said
I fit some category, or I seemed
derivative in work and quickly read.

But now that we’ve grown quieter and kind,
they think I’ve changed the fundamental me.
(I harbor yet my laughing rebel mind,
enjoying constant eccentricity.)
They seem to get me now they’ve ceded fuss;
I just don’t want to be conspicuous.

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Mailboxes

mailbox

Five units here: two vacant; two in use
whose residents have gone away this week.
The property is mine – I can cut loose
or not. The solitude I daily seek
is here without an effort or a plan.
I don’t have to consider anyone
beside myself – no woman, child or man
will ask me to dilute my private fun.

All’s well until I open up the box
to fetch my mail, and find it’s fully jammed
with every flyer sent to this address.
I curse the postman as I view the locks,
but soon think other cubbies must be crammed
with mail unpacked by neighbors – that’s my guess.

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Granding

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I loved a rubber doll when I was five
so fervently that I would bite her head.
I always knew the toy was not alive –
my passion didn’t harm her, but it bred
in me awareness that emotions could
be hot and hard to harness or control.
My fondness for Ginnette was only good,
but waxed as violent as vitriol.

And sure I loved the father of my kids,
but not as much as them. He didn’t pierce
my heart with passion like my babies did –
I never felt as burgeoning or fierce
again until each grandchild got a start,
expanding and remodeling my heart.

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Excuses

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For anyone who ever ducked a date
by claiming some unwellness or demand
you can’t avoid, for those who fabricate
a social lie, you’re bound to understand
when someone else is doing it to you.
He says a flight will agitate his ears,
a drive will hurt his heels, but here’s what’s true –
he’s chronically depressed and teems with fears.

The only clue when he was young was wrath.
Adventurous and social then, we watched
him raging as he aged. He blazed a path
to idle lone retreat, and so he botched
the opportunities to love and grow.
My former friend let all intentions go.

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To Keep Your Strength Up

ginger ale

My mother gave me ginger ale to drink
when I was sick at home with bellyache.
She also served saltines; my mom would think
and say I needed sustenance to make
the illness go. “You have to keep your strength
up,” she’d proclaim. “Your body needs to eat.”
When I refused, she’d go to any length
to get me to ingest some salt or sweet.

She never understood the energy
digestion burns. She didn’t comprehend
the body’s bigger need. Recovery
is quickest when my system’s armies spend
their powers in repelling foreign foes,
instead of processing digestive flows.

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Animal Brain

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An older friend complained of monkey brain,
at breakfast, after shattered sleep one night.
I understood; she didn’t need explain
the time awake, the way her thoughts would light
from cares to frets to worries like a chimp
in manic swings, unsettled, never still.
Advising her to let her head go limp
as legs asleep, instead she took a pill.

In time I caught the problem, but I heard
my words – I didn’t pay the monkey mind.
Rejecting care about awake conferred
a gentle rock that wafted. Now I find
sufficient sleep a trait I rest upon;
my thoughts in bed glide smoothly as a swan.

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