poem: dear 2018

shall i tell you of my womanhood

and the unpopular things that

leave me sitting

alone at parties, the 1960’s splashed angrily in

my face, and my hands now wet

with mascara tears. but

i am still not going to graduate school

and i

still

don’t want my entire life boxed into a career. i want the emotional attachment

of one beautiful man that i

can civilize and thus put my lapsed-virgin fingerprint on

all of western civilization, with the baby clinging

at my skirt and another one wailing in the

kitchen. i tell my husband frankly that i still need the intellectual debate

to keep my mind burning and also

i read tolstoy during the half-hour nap times, twice a week.

there is sacrifice in this but it is the most

enlivening sort of giving up, because you cannot take

my womanhood from me.

you will not make me

less than what i am