Brenda
When my daughter said she named her vulva Brenda, I laughed.
Then she wanted to know what was so funny which raised an obligation to ensure she didn’t take it pejoratively, divisibly.
I didn’t intend to mock. I’m onboard with the naming and the name. It’s just I didn’t grow up in New York or Massachusetts.
The only Brenda I knew in the nineties was a bitch on television or maybe real life. Either way, she rocked, so hell yeah, Brenda. Kick ass, girl.
When she asks what a condom is, I tell her. When she’s active I’ll make sure she’s supplied.
When she asks why she has to carry condoms I ask what’s she going to do if she wants to have sex with someone and there’s no condom?
Not have sex, she says. No. Have condoms.
Own yourself, I say. Respect your body. Enjoy it.
But protect it. Refer to addendum on pregnancy, and the 17 x 22 illustrated guide to elephantiasis and gonorrhea.
Ich Bin Ein Berliner
In line at Dunkin’ Donuts, I ask Patrick about Trump’s
Holocaust speech, how he didn’t mention
Jewish people. Wouldn’t this be considered
a hate crime in Germany where anti-Semitism
and Holocaust denial are prisonable offenses?
Patrick didn’t think so but the explanation the Press Secretary supplied the next day,
how Jews weren’t mentioned because Jews weren’t
the only group who suffered during the Nazi terror
–that statement would be a crime in Germany.
I tell him how, when I picked my son up
from Hebrew school, I counted close
to thirty BMWs and Mercedes parked
in the synagogue lot, and don’t know
if these German car owners have seen
photos of Hitler touring Mercedes plants
during World War II or if they have
and just consider Germany different now.
Patrick’s Catholic so he may not be a specialist but he says, Now that Trump’s president I feel
a level of schadenfreude for his voters, the racist,
homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic ones who’ll suffer
most under policies hidden behind his wall of rhetoric.
Are they really so stupid to think that wearing
Make America Great Again hats means America
was ever great for their socio-economic group?
Patrick’s attended marches, organized protests outside
his congressman’s office. There’s something very sixties
about it, he says. The feminist activists, the resistance
to police. But Patrick was born in ’87 and learned
about the sixties watching the Woodstock documentary
and listening to his father’s Dylan and Hendrix LPs.
There must be a word for that, I tell him, feeling nostalgic for something you didn’t experience.
There probably is, he says. It’s probably Russian.
Brad Johnson’s second book Smuggling Elephants Through Airport Security (Michigan State University Press) was selected by Carolyn Forche for the 2018 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Work of his has also been accepted by Carolina Quarterly, Gargoyle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, J Journal, Meridian, Poet Lore, Tar River Poetry and others.