Long Poems About Margaret Atwood

( After Margaret Atwood )

i

A ringing recess bell—
a door spilling children
onto the playground
as ants fleeing a colony

Each pair of feet
contradict the direction
of the former set
until they encase monkey bars
merry-go-rounds
teeter-totters
slides

Most are carefree, but
not all feel the song;
the moving of joy
as blood and freedom's
marrow hardening their bones

Loners, outcasts
introverts, their faces
hollow wells of fear
cold and deep spaces ...

(Parallels of Fictional Tales and Real-World Spells)

There are these men who claim to have more
knowledge over women’s bodies. They issue laws
to have more control over them under the guise of
morality or God and all that that is pure, and so a
plan is formed, but it’s more of an ominous map
that seems to head toward this fictional dystopia

*

Quoting scriptures, they look to these ancient laws,
to a time when women were stoned to death if
they were caught in the act of fornication or some
other decree that...