Suffer a sea-change

Joshua Elwood

(Credit to Lillian B. Rubin and Arlie Hochschild and Robert Esnard and Fred Moten and Edith Pratt for the frame and the soil and the seed. All I did was drink and something grew up out of there.)

They will come home, begin their second shift, cook clean call friends catch up 

watch 

for trouble spite and comfort, 

dishing with weary pleasure, feeling the headache stomachache backache coming on. And will wash this child’s eyelids, clip fingernails, comb hair with casual possessive

forceful affection.

Those believing they are men 

will have to become mothers 

to undo the soldiered sex 

and make of genders fashions 

to tailor and dress tomorrow’s passions.