We can ask.

It’s a question we always ask: which one is better, safer-

Confronting or ignoring?

Perhaps I should crowdsource the answer:

What would harassers like better?

Or perhaps they can’t be generalised, like the rest of us. 

Let us take a nuanced, case-by-case approach. 

When someone accosts you on the street, blocks your path with their car, 

demands your number as price for your freedom, 

Whip out your survey form. 

If he cannot be shamed, let us name, place, animal and thing him

Let us drown him in nouns and adjectives, 

Pin him and predict him and molest him with our microscope

Let us debate him at dinner tables and on primetime TV

To make ourselves feel better: contributing to #EndSexualViolence

While ignoring that our nephew (/uncle/cousin) does some rather strange things when drunk;

One of the older males must be asked to speak to him one of these days,

Otherwise one of these girls nowadays—you know what they are—will MeToo him. 

Potential energy

I like the idea of potential energy:

Shock absorbers, 

Vigilant grand-aunts;

A world where consequence lies in wait.

The dam’s face, mighty and ordered,

The waiting lake that drowns dissent,

The steady releases the turbines run on,

The hungry deluge when the storm comes.

I relate to it—

An appearance of composure

And a store of suffering 

Have their uses.

Explanations

You’re too smart to be religious, people have said.

I know you wanted to, other people have said. 

Yet other people, with Grade-x subtlety,

Wheedle, ‘Apparently so-and-so and you…’

Mind-reading is cultural competence hereabouts,

And I’m often scolded by those who see it 

As also Love’s labour. 

Sometimes I wish I were more adept at picking up 

The shot blanks, the loneliness. 

At other times, I am offended by the claim. 

Beneath my ego’s visor, my heart jittery and swollen,

I offer my best silences, reverence for your unknown, 

Restraint of the grasping, fumbling guesses:

So that you can speak and be learnt from.

‘No, thank you’ is fine. ‘What a fool’ is unacceptable.

On Powder Mountain

They say there is a mountain somewhere,

Far away. In Utah, U.S.A. 

A whole mountain—pro-grade ski runs, 

Picture-ripe cabins, lithe cafés—

Dedicated to the self-discovery 

Of people who’ll venture capital for a mountain 

To ditch the bad vibes of those types

Who seem not to afford good investments.

I had thought mountains were unbuyable, 

Which those retreating to them were to emulate:

Alone, in howling caves and shivering frames, daring

One-sided discourse with an immovable infinite. 

The change these days may be that inner peace

Is now a totem to hold at bay not 

Outer turmoil, but inner silence. 

Or that they seek ‘To be a beacon 

of inspiration and a light in the world’

Via a city on a hill that cannot be hidden,

But (thank heaven) can be fenced.

Admirer

A crow has been haunting my window sill, to catch a glimpse of me.

Every morning at eleven I hear his claws clatter, 

the inquisitive tap as he presses his beak to the glass,

His round eye inquires: Well, is she…? 

Once he's satisfied I’m still there, he flies away.

I doubt kissing him would produce any effect,

Other than scratches and a possible gouge or two

For me, and storm clouds in that round crow eye

And a confused racing in that grey crow chest

And maybe a fear more potent than admiration.

In any case, I’m zero princes short of a happy ending:

An admirer who isn’t creepy, 

A well-wisher who allows me my space,

And me with something to look forward to, every eleven o’clock.

good girl

It is like I am little,
And Ma is encouraging me—instructing, really—
To hand over Hungry Hippos—my favourite game—
to the little boy in the drawing room who wanted it.
He's smaller than you, she says, he wants it so
—I can hear him crying, it's brightly lit out there—
Be a good girl and give it to him.

I did, but I don't remember that bit. It
Didn't seem to matter if he was grateful.
I wouldn't have been allowed to throw a fit like that, the brat.
I only remember my mother's urging, be good.
Alright, I must have thought. If she's sure.

I'm told I'm an accommodating type. My family
Would laugh at that, but my friends do agree—
That lesson has stayed. I will do almost anything
To be thought of as good. I will learn, keep on learning,
What good is.

It sounds fine, but there are key points when
To be thought good by the most people is a failing:
To intervene in a popular instance of bullying.
To never explain how angry you are, and why.
Even hungry to be patted on the head by those I love:
Like a dog—even if they are wrong, they are the masters
Of biscuits, the controllers of the ball.

Not my parents any longer, they will object. Like most kids,
I've gone through the rebellious phase; any principles but theirs,
I seem to have vowed. Unluckily for me, there were always
Others to love and put in their place.
Most would say luckily, I know.

I am holding the Hungry Hippos box, already packed up for giving,
And only the pleading look is left to me. Since then I have had
Much more to keep than I had to give away then; I tell myself
I haven't the right to question whether selfishness might have been
The better course. And of course, I haven't the courage
to pat my own head and take the consequences.

An evening of Rummy

In a hand that looked like a winner when you picked it up

There are cards that already line up—‘pure sets’—

And cards that might and cards that surely won’t, 

Unless others decide likewise 

And you’re clever enough to take leavings.

Foraging what you can get

From what others don’t value, 

And, just sometimes, getting what you want

By wanting it harder,

Is the game. 

That is all fine as far as it goes,

But what happens when you’re 

Irrationally drawn to spades

—so sharp and dark—

And scathing of diamonds,

Or when you drop a card someone wants,

See them pounce on it, and grit your teeth

In moral quandary? 

(All the while trying to seduce 

The one across the table with

your skills and winning?)

Holding your cards in a tight fan

—too tight, not how the pros do it—

Trying to look as convincing as those who take it seriously

While knowing you don’t, you can’t, you can’t afford to.

The food dwindles and the clock pirouettes and 

You’re learning about the others—she’s surprisingly clever—

and everyone has a strategy, and they all seem unfamiliar;

It’s with relief that when someone proposes Snap,

We descend from our card-ramparts,

Squealing at the advent of—what a stroke of brilliance!—chips.