To my esteemed humanist friend,

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I confess

I was angry at first 

At real atrocities ignored and

fictions so promiscuously embraced

But then I thought heck

So what if she mixes her metaphors? Or fails to tally the cost 

Of a world unmoored by love?

Instead 

I have this one

Abiding, hypothetical

Question-

Haven’t you ever been afraid that this triune omnipotent

God of love 

Might be just like 

Dustin Hoffman in the penultimate 

scene of The Graduate?

Pounding on the outside

(yes, the outside)

of the church, calling your name as you

Marry the wrong guy?

And if you do-

(what if you do!?)

Who will be there

By your side on the bus to forever?

Tree King

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The before and the not-yet

Become the metaphysical geography of a mid-afternoon discourse-

What is the last holiday of a person’s life?

Passover?  Kwanzaa?  Thanksgiving?  Cinco de Mayo?  Christmas?

Christmas-I know you love Christmas!

As do the trees

Poised as they are, impatient,

On the far tether of human reckoning

Waiting for the signal

To clap 

Clap before their King

Feminism for ordinary stones

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After giving the human mothers ample time to choose

The-would-be-has-been-will-be-stone-mover turned to this sea of

quiet rocks

Paced among them

Raised his arms wide

And spoke words of life over them-

Sing, cry, stomp, holler, embargo, resist, advocate, articulate…raise 

these your newborn voices

for all these

very little girls 

curled without defense-

half-a-billion muted, crucial

Question marks

as each loses

one simple, brutal

Round of rock-paper-scissors

in this place we have marked “private”

then left alone.

Thin (Fake news:real girls)

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After the 911 call, the sirens, the knocked-in door.  After the 2-for-1 autopsy, the souping-out of ballistic shards in layers of mother, curls of child.  After the sewing up, the tissue samples, temporary storage in this antiseptic place. 

After this near-final totem of mother-and-child.

After all that…

the cool and empty morgue fills with an emanation of light, softly cupped voices, perfumed flurry, fairy godmothers.  A little late she thought as they scooped and coddled the baby-little late she thought as they lifted her from the crook of each bent elbow, inexplicably washed and free of blood.  Here child, they murmur, try on this, try on that.  Blur of organza and tulle.

After the day she’s had she goes along with all the fuss. Come on, child, carriage is waiting!

And there they all are bippity, boppity, boop!  Apartment lot for courtyard, uncajolable vermin  with no intention of donning livery or pulling pumpkins.  No signs of princes.

Unfazed she realizes that even here, in the weird, magic-less limbo yonder, even here the grownups believe in magical fairytales..

which still end up 

doing no good for the real girls

Living then dying 

Alone.

Fake news for real girls

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once there was a real girl

who (lucky for her)

Lived in a city with superhero dolphins

So when the humans she lived with began to

Bruise bones beneath skin

Pull out hair

Leave signs of trauma on shared walls

Well.. the

The magic dolphins of San Antonio 

leapt to action!

Circled the child

Nudged her to safety

with their silvery, bottle-shaped snouts 

Clicked and nodded their unequivocal attention to all

The days of her distress

Used their shear numbers to buoy her up

Brought her 

bits of fish and garlands of seaweed

And in an unanimous decision 

Ferried her to their own

blue, cool comparatively safe

Under-water-kingdom

far from the

city where these human mothers had

Failed her

Mike Pence and mysogyny accusations 

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Just the day before the 2016 presidential election I told my friends  I feared that this election was like two toddlers fighting over a single ice cream cone.  The loser was going to fuss.

This has proved true beyond my wildest imagination.  And since 80 percent of the national press was unabashedly on Clinton’s side of the ice cream fight, the tantrum that has ensued has been both instructive and embarrassing–watching grownups with real jobs behave like the stepsisters in Cinderella.

Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, has this been more apparent than in the sly criticism of Mike Pence’s diligent faithfulness to his wife, and as an extension to his family and his community.

I dare to say that given their druthers, Bill and Donald’s family would have benefited from Pence’s honor rules.

So to call a man mysogynistic for honoring his wife seems to be a bellwether of the ice cream tantrum situation–better to call up down and left right than to report real objective news?

It seems that way.

The American public deserves better.  So does Pence.  If more men followed his rules, women in this country would be safer.

And as journalists in places like Russia and Mexico pay with their lives for their autonomy and journalistic integrity, ours have devolved into middle school bullies.