August 2017
These poems are both set in summer, and address gender ambiguity or fluidity. Children are in the process of learning and solidifying gender roles, yet, when I was asked to be a "boy" for the dance at Girl Scout camp, I felt like I really became a boy for the evening. I also feel that people project gendered stereotypes onto animals. "Get a Real Dog" is a golden shovel poem that addresses the issue of gender projection.
Sky God
I was a boy for about an hour
and a half
in the green shorts
and white blouse
of Furnace Hills Girl Scout camp
after the first night
of headache hot dogs
and marshmallow goo
we girls became small
about our business
of treading wooded pathways
telling ourselves stories
we believed the treetops
when they claimed to dance
of their own volition
the breeze barely involved
I became a boy
when I was forced
to ask a Brownie to the ball
and present her with a flower
made of tissue
that was how I turned Sky God
strode wide into my mastery
I acquired reason
began to see that the earth
would be undone from above
the Brownie sensed this
and was afraid
I looked down and pitied her
wanted to protect her
even as my mind soared
to the spiraling stars
and deep into the milky spine
of our galaxy
rising up on my toes
I perched atop our far-flung
fingertip home
next morning birds crowded
their insistent voices
into the open flap of the tent
to tell of the blue bowl
congealing into its comforting
mask of day
enveloping an enclosed
and finite world
atmosphere unraveling
even then
sometimes I almost remember
the way my mind
soared above my feet
with Brownie by my side
she’s become the word
I forget
as I near the end of a sentence
Get a Real Dog
"and I cry at the uncertainty of rainbows”
From Small Breaths, by Eileen Carney Hulme
Rhinestone collar, fluffy white fur and
this voice of mine may render me ridiculous, but I
was once whelp of the she-wolf, and grayly I cry
for the old brooding blood moon at
night. I may no longer run with the
pack and perhaps I confound you with an uncertainty
of gender, but this royal blue Nerf ball of
yours, I will rip to bits under a hail of tiny rainbows.
First published in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review
© 2017 Sylvia Cavanaugh
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