it's unfair that i should post negative comments without dedicating the proper time to flesh them out, but i can only do what i can only do.

here is the best part of the poem:
Nothing / she needs can be got; if it could / she’d go get it: the answer to nightmares; /
a mother who’d be proud of her; doing things /
a mother could be proud of; having hips /
& knowing how to squeal at the beach laughing /
when the boy down the block picked her up & carried her / & threw her in the water."

there are simply too many un-best parts.

on a side note about loving teens and teaching teens: me too, but sometimes it costs unexpected and significant emotional tolls. last week my catechism class (8th and 9th grade, plus a smattering of sophomores) derailed our discussion(agreeable to me because of the immediacy of the tangent) to the topic of "feeling less safe." they're listening to their mothers' and fathers' fears over the economy and the election and the war and the world. the consensus was they feel less safe than when they were, say 10 or 12. they're certain it's not because they're more mature or because ten year old ignorance was bliss. they insist they feel less safe because they are less safe.

except for one girl who said, "i felt pretty unsafe when i was ten, but that was a pretty bad year."

damn.