I Have Questions

by Jenny Morelli

Image credit: Evan Dennis on Unplash

Be a man. Man up.  

You got some balls for a girl.  

Don’t cry like a girl.  

You hit like a girl.  

Why do girls play softball  

and pitch the way they do? 

Why can’t girls play football  

and boys wear skirts?  

Why have genders  

become political  

and the mere thought 

of boys as girls and girls  

as boys and gender fluidity  

and pronoun possibilities 

are now considered ‘woke’?  

Why is accepting everyone 

considered ‘woke’?  

Why is ‘woke’  

considered a liberal lunacy  

dangerous to our society?  

Why are the current leaders 

afraid to let women vote?  

Why are we still ‘springing forward’  

with our clocks  

when we’re rewinding progress 

almost a hundred damn years?  

Why was letting women vote  

called suffrage? Why  

does the word suffer  

mean to allow, but also  

to anguish?  

Why can’t I stop 

asking the most childlike  

questions like ‘Why can’t we all  

just love instead of hate, just live  

and let live?’ when the only answer  

these days is ‘Because a bunch  

of rich old white men say we can’t? 

Maybe it’s not that I can’t  

stop asking these questions,  

but that I won’t. I’ll keep on   

asking and asking and asking  

and writing and writing and writing 

until I once again live  

in a country more enlightened  

than the dark times into which  

we’ve once again been dragged;  

until there’s no difference  

or derision or divide  

between black and white  

and brown, between girl and  

boy and human; until  

we’re all kinder to each other  

and America has returned 

to normal, returned to woke 

returned to a progress  

worth my time,  

worth my effort,  

worth my emotions,  

worth my pride.  

***

Jenny Morelli

Jenny Morelli is a high school English teacher who lives in New Jersey with her husband and cat. She is often either inspired by her students or else they're triggering memories in her of when she was young and struggling with her self-confidence. She has been published in a number of literary magazines, including Spare Parts for a novel excerpt, Spillwords for several themed poems, and Bottlecap Press for her own chapbook This is Not a Drill.