Dear Bleaders,
I like the idea that if I post this now I will have posted on Wednesday. I've got nine minutes. So here's a poem, first published at The New Republic last year.
Also, I've been going on about the Pantoum over at Dear Fonzie. Pantoum! and More Pantoum!
More soon, keep breathing,
Love,
Jennifer
Split
We speak of rebellion when the kid
is a hellion and the folks are as mild
as a spoon.
Likewise Republicans
born of freethinking lesbians
seem like reactors, turncoats
on how they were raised.
Let me offer another
concatenation
of this explanation.
Think of your mother
as one discreet corner
of a person with a multiple
mental disorder.
You’re one of the others. One that split off.
Not a turncoat then, but the expression
of what was suppressed. The same woman,
your mother, who wants to help others,
also likes life as a racket
where the best finagler wins.
For reasons we do not fully assemble
she can not voice this redder side
of her nature and the voicing of it,
that is you.
You are not teaching the former
generation.
Their frenzied distaste in certain directions
was the cue you used
to decipher the code
of just how you were not
to do as you were being told.
–Jennifer Michael Hecht