We’re all together
celebrating Elthea’s birthday
and today Khanyi and Ahava
did a dance interpretation
of one of Elthea’s online suitors.
He sent a long text
that they read out loud
and danced to. The text
was moving in a funny way:
what we tell one another when we
want to connect - what we did
and what we didn’t. How it is
we tell about our lives. Hard
even now, and even if we’ve
had a lot of practice.
Earlier the kids told a story
about Broer Linus’s penis
a religious older man so strict
that he wouldn’t let women
wear pants in his house and yet
there he was with his penis (Ahava
didn’t see it but other people did)
and I thought to myself
Broer Linus’s Penis
is a good title for something.
But not this poem.
You had me at the title. And made me laugh, too.
I so needed this. Thank you.