Well, at least it doesn’t rhyme. But then again,
it made it get all stormy outside, and blue. Shit,
can’t I have some coffee for my tired men,
those I left in the sunless afternoon, those unfit
for polite society, whatever that is? I’ve been
thinking about changing my name. Do you like Crit?
I like the blueness of the light here. I like to crit-
icize others for actions that I’ll merely do again
with a dumb-ass smirk on my face, like I’d been
planning it all along. Ha ha! I win. Take that shit
back to Topeka, Martha. I wish you’d quit trying to fit
your fist in your mouth. Wait, were you talking? Amen
to that, lady. You don’t need to be understood by dead men
like me to have relevance, just like I don’t need the crit-
ical insights of those of the female persuasion to fit
the blueness of this sunless car into my book, Again?,
a novel about the second feminist movement. Shit,
that was the ‘60s anyway, and who hadn’t been
at least a little disingenuous? Not that it’s been
so long since we saw those demons rising. The chairmen
are still the chairmen, tired and sunless in cars, talking shit
about their demons and displaying the blasphemy of hypocrit-
ical village idiots who do the same thing over and over again,
forever cursing and praising themselves simultaneously, fit-
tingly. I feel real affection for them, and that’s why I’m unfit
for the feminist uprising. There are other reasons, too. I’ve been
untruthful to myself, disingenuous I guess, but then again
who hasn’t told himself that what makes men men
is the roasting of marshmallows over burning bras, not crit-
ical so much as irrespective? It’s that double sense of … shit,
what is it? Oh, yeah, the double sense of “careless,” as both “shit”
and “giggle.” It’s Latin for being late to work, for somehow fit-
ting both feet in your mouth, and for lying in the sunless crit-
icism of polite society, whoever that is. Wait, that’s my mom. She’s been
up all night with her blindfold and cane. She’s developing her acumen
for getting around without looking. When she can see again,
it’s more abstract, and when again her shoe plops down in dog shit,
she doesn’t feel like a hypocrite of sight. Not that it feels fit-
ting, but she’s been over this before, like diplomats or Frenchmen.