showman, jester, juggler of feelings.

Go on, recite your blossoming sunsets,

your crystal-clear seas, your songs

of boy meets girl and love’s eternal plight.

Go on, you’re right.

Who cares what else has been going on

around the world a thousand years,

a century ago, or only yesterday?

Your easy-going happy verses

are eternal, not my long, anxious

broodings.

A rosebud of a girl, pure and cheerful

like a robin in the spring, listening

to my poems, asks “What is Auschwitz?”

Her sister, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked,

wants to know if Stalin is a country

or a man. They both think that Project 2025

is the name of a Staten Island shelter for the homeless,

and though they nonchalantly wear miniskirts

and see-through blouses, take contraceptives,

go to school, to work, and dream of plump

paychecks, vacations, Ph.D.s, they consider

feminism some sort of a disease,

a shameful affliction, while hidden in the closet

my old burnt bra still holds billows of smoke

in its smoldering cups.

Go on, minstrel of light verse, you jester

and kind showman, you are right; there’s nothing

everlastingly worth singing about

but the lovely sea and the moon’s soft sigh.