For E. Jean Carroll

There is a Light, Don't Let it Go Out

Dec 2, 2021

I.
I don’t know you - not really,
though the clever names of canines
you’ve loved and lost
caper around you like calling cards
and the authors who taught you
how to rip the human condition to shreds
with scathing humor and insight
have been my teachers too.

II.
I don’t know you,
but you wrote your way into my days
with audacious advice and words you’d reclaimed or remade
from the polite-society-police: dick pics, tricky dicks, dickweeds,
boffing, bouncing, banging,
up-righters, usable uprighters, and the right to do
just about anything related to sex
as long as it was FUN and no one was harmed in the process.

III.
Because of your words
I have giggled, snorted, hiccupped,
cackled, chortled, guffawed,
peed my pants
(on more than one occasion),
and scared my cats half to death.
It’s all your fault,
and I love you for it.

IV.
I don’t know you, not the day-to-day,
get up, wash your face, feed the dog, and wrestle with emails you,
but any woman who makes space in her heart and home
for black widows, mice, and poems,
who consumes mustard sandwiches,
dares to wear pink and peacock-blue wigs,
and takes road trips with Lewis Carroll in a Prius named Miss Bingley
is all right by me and receives automatic Soul Sister status.

V.
And so Sister mine, it’s time for me to feed you lines
about girding your loins,
poking testicles,
and blowing the orange toupee away,
but all I can think to say
are words from the song I wish I could play
as you march into that courtroom:
”I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I'm meant to be,
this is me.”