by Anna Evans

On Being Asked By My Daughters
Why There Has Never Been A Woman President

The question that these couplets will rehearse
is not a new one, nor unique to verse,
but one that, as a woman and a mother,
I have considered more than any other:
why, when a man and woman are both blessed
with the same skill, the man will do the best.
This holds as true in office, bank and court
as ever it did before our sisters fought,
and dived at horses’s hooves, or bound with chains
their wrists to railings, all of it in vain.
No woman has presided over our nation;
for this we owe our daughters explanation.
And yet, the sad truth is they are the cause
themselves, and not the state or man-made laws.
A woman, once a mother, is that first
and thus the gift of children is a curse
on any other gift she might have had.
There is another option, but it’s mad
and by unthinking people judged as bad:
a woman can put down her babes and pay
another to succor them through the day,
by casting herself as a kind of man
and parent like a father if she can.
The answer can’t be this. Where are the rhymes
that glorify the mothers of our times?
Unrated, under-published, for our critics
prefer to read of wars and politics
than what it means to bear and raise a child –
those poems to women’s journals are exiled.
I trust the purpose of my words is clear:
this true equality commences here,
not in the pinstriped boardroom but in art
where we should learn to praise a mother’s heart.
So – I write poems of pregnancy and birth;
without these things I think you’d find the earth
would very soon be much less populated
and man, with all his sorrows, soon outdated.
Sure, my domestic verses won’t prevent
famine or war, but if they’re judged well-meant
perhaps a woman could be president?
I dedicate this treatise to my girls:
ask on your questions that unman the world!



Picking Up

All you can do sometimes is start to clean
a room. Begin by ridding it of all
the crap: that coat, those cups, that magazine
you read last week. Next, vacuum wall to wall,
and plump the cushions. Don’t try to resist
the urge to dust, and if the windowpane
has greasy handprints, add it to your list.
Work until order is restored again.

For entropy increases, and it brings
insanity and chaos. When the black
pall descends on you, start cleaning things.
I promise you it holds the demons back.
Trust me: I deal with all the spawn of hell.
I’m mad of course, but my house looks quite well.



Polemic to America, 2005

Twenty-seven hundred dead:
we all know someone who’s lost
someone. America, no sports
trophy waits for us this way.
It is not one of those games
we lionize, which allow no ties,
that other countries hardly play.

In baseball the umpires add
innings until someone wins.
NBA overtime follows
overtime and no player protests.
Hockey and Football
end the standoff with sudden
death. But to force success,

we conscript a loser: the tired
pitcher, the fumbling quarterback,
the goalie who misses the puck.
Milliseconds on a clock
may be easier to divide
than this dead-lock; yet, we call
it all on one fuck-up.

English batsmen whistle
and shoulder their willow
bats - five day cricket
matches often end a draw.
In Soccer, center-forwards
swap jerseys after 90 minutes;
one-all is the most common score.

Is life always a coin-toss,
or do both sides sometimes deserve
to see the sun, the black
shadows and all of the gray?
Sometimes, the need to win loses
us too much, America,
and we ought to walk away.