Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine # 14

1965 I beat him in the spelling bee.

I knew the answers, aced the test he barely passed. I hit a fly ball that grazed his reaching glove, and watched him get all smug you’re just a girl, and girls don’t count I yelled, that isn’t true he shrugged and said, they all say so.

I looked around and saw a man in every place of prominence.

I dug through books to find that Eve had erred, was weak and must be ruled, the she and her are better lost inside the he and himall men created equal, education for Emile, domestication for Sophie no man an island, no woman …

No women.

Stunned, I rubbed my eyes, tried to unravel the knot, yet each string I pulled was broken, burned or led to men and more men.

There is a creature’s moment just when the trap is sprung, descending, when life becomes betrayal of biology, a trust misplaced, a bitter, spiteful food to taste.

My argument collapsed to dust settled in layers that could be written on I beat him in the spelling bee.

I knew the answers, aced the test he barely passed. I hit a fly ball that grazed his reaching glove.

Carol Casey Carol Casey lives in Blyth, Ontario, Canada. Her work has appeared in Backchannels, Front Porch Review, and other journals and in We Are One: Poems From the Pandemic, as well as in other anthologies.