pronoun circle-jerk and the dog charlie

i had scarcely got acquainted

when they took me by the paw & made me even-minded

nor did i mind

i had exactly enough window

i had exactly enough to get started

wine makes a person weak

that is not to say that wine is not delightful, only

that it makes a person weak

a person can be made weak with whiskey

and this was the mexicans’ military tactic

with the chiricahua apache

and the dutch with the lenape down in manahatta

there was a dog named charlie

cally called it an ‘it’

when we had our pronoun circle-jerk

i told the group they could call me ‘it’

you know like the sky and the grass and

a bird where you can’t tell what it is

it, its, itself

but then i sort of chickened out and said

if ‘it’ ‘made them feel weird’ as a pronoun for a human

they could call me ‘they’

or any gender-neutral pronoun i said

xe or zae or e or shim-sham or

two head-cocks and a click i joked

looking at charlie’s belly as charlie

rolled on its back

Source: PoetryNow (2019)