In the demimonde they say rules
don’t apply; even the law of gravity
has been suspended. You can laugh
from the bottom bounce of a check.
You can float. Women are more
than ornamental: their arts are art.
A sailor spots his ship’s figurehead
on her way to a meeting of the board.
The glass ceiling hasn’t been shattered
but turned into a floor: like sea ice,
blue, translucent, prone to cracks
and groans. It will hold your weight
until spring, when the old order returns
with its dark fins and foreclosures,
its strip poker, its house that always wins.
Nature conspires with nurture again
and an infant, fresh from its watery Eden,
screams like a gull for your breast.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
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