By Leigh Lucas
for Wiley
His words are tomatoes
and panties. Mine are
a little harder to admit.
He tells me: I know it may
surprise you, but deep down
I’m really insecure.
His poetry’s a parrot in a
dollar-sign sack. Mine’s a child’s
hand in a fat grip on a fat crayon,
puncturing crate paper.
Be gentle, dear.
You have to say it sternly.
If I was more
like someone who wrote about
ripe red underthings, I might
feel safe enough to keep only
a thin layer of spandex
between me and the gory, between me
and immaturity, and words like womp,
the sound the villain makes
when he’s flung against the drywall.
Instead, I write about How I’m
Feeling, and wanting
superpowers, and actually think:
I wish my boyfriend was Batman.
That’s a real thought that I have.
This last decade, this in-between
place, became hard to stomach
the moment I realized that you
are the poem I’ve been trying to write.
I don’t have the velocity for
sleeplessness, nor the power
to create fire from a spark.
I don’t want to be saved.
I just want to know a hero.
--------
It was a really gorgeous day on Saturday, which I hate to gloat about considering how many people are still digging out from snow and there may even be snow south of us tomorrow night. But it wasn't very cold and there was very little wind, so after a bunch of morning chores, we went to Brookside Gardens, where the geese and ducks are pairing off and the turtles come out to enjoy the sun. We saw daffodils, asters, crocuses, snowdrops, lenten roses, and the first apricot blossoms outside, plus a bunch of more exotic flowers inside the conservatory, and we drove around the athletic fields to the indoor sports facility we'd never seen before.
After dinner, we watched Justice League, which is now streaming and we somehow missed it in the theaters. I liked it better than Batman v. Superman, though not by much -- it had a couple of better actors but it also had at least four more fight scenes, and not even loving the Amazons made me want to see one more battle involving them. My favorite moments were throwaways like the Metropolis Daily News headline, "Did they return to their planet?" over photos of Superman, David Bowie, and Prince. The Flash was too snarky yet not funny enough. Diana and Arthur are both great, but there's too much Batmansplaining and too little believable human emotion.
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