Can’t you snap the cap of the toothpaste tube?
Keep the invader microbes from breeding there?
I admit: I’m supposed to be large-hearted,
above the nit picking details of domestic
living, but this issue grates on me.
How will I make it with you through this journey
if the toothpaste gapes on the countertop
moldering night after night in the open air?
Our lives depend upon the civil give and take
of spouse and spouse, all of it your fault no doubt,
as I hold in high esteem the simple act
of snapping the cap back on the toothpaste tube.
My electric shaver went on the fritz.
Having served well for fifteen years,
it’s started buzzing in a way that sounds
like a bumble bee in throes of death.
I’ll make do (I tell myself) with a blade
and shaving cream from the drug store.
Ha! So many choices! Such advances
in shaving technology! all to render me
smooth and sexy in ways formerly
unthinkable, with my five-blade razor
oozing lubricant, and canister of gel
that hockey players use. I’ll wage a war
on my face, wash the hairy casualties
down the drain, hide all evidence
that I might once have been an animal.
In the same aisle, you find tampons
for your feminine hygiene needs,
a polite way to say your ovaries
still go through the motions, lunar
egg-popping with attendant mess.
And for all the uniqueness an ova
suggests (what with DNA etcetera)
there’s a surprising universality
wrought by the global napkin trade.
Absorbency here is the same (I suppose)
as it is at home, or in Scotland
or Nigeria. Is this solidarity
through free markets? Communing
through the woman’s body politic?
Download the complete collection of poems and accompanying photographs as a pdf book.