Riding Broomsticks
| They keep us locked away in boxes plain – |
| ordinary cardboard prisons. Only |
| released one day a year, and even then |
| bound in still more trappings, issued warnings. |
| For pretty, be a princess; otherwise |
| strong and tough, a soldier’s gun at ready. |
| A ban on blurring – no invoking dusk, |
| day and night combined. Use x and y from |
| arithmetic, not foolish alchemy. |
| Practice not forbidden magics, they say. |
| And for the brave who force out closet door – |
| pointed hat, a dunce cap mourning, laughed at. |
| Apply the green, afix the warts, begin |
| wrapping black around in skirts and cloaks of |
| material thick enough to hide the body. |
| Noses big and pointed jaws jutting, crone-old |
| and neither boy nor girl, just silly it, |
| worst of both the worlds. We are only |
| allowed in daylight, kept in sight. At night |
| none can laugh at foolish dress-up, you say. |
| I know, though, why you hide us away – |
| fear, of dark arcane enticing us out |
| to beg for sweets and turn some tricks. You lock |
| doors but we will leave through windows, feet not |
| even involved. Forgot about the brooms, |
| didn’t you? Made for more than clean-up and so |
| are we. Between the legs, hands gripping shaft |
| hard in front and bush-wild rear, a thrusting |
| to fly away. We change, transcend: remember |
| how the angels were hermaphrodites, too? |
Copyright 2003, Samuel Minier