susannah baker
Childless
After several very interesting careers including medieval
lexicography, psychiatric social work, and health-services research,
Susannah Baker abandoned professional life to do what she always wanted to
do anyway--write a novel. Poems, however, simply will be written. Alas, what
can she do but show them to the paper?
I will not explain myself
to Ritalin or trick-or-treat,
offer no apologies
to video games or terrorists
and never to those first-grade crayons—
the fat ones made for tiny hands.
To the house where I grew up,
foreign policy or the works
of A. A. Milne, primary colors
and graduated licensure
I make no excuses
nor least of all
to all of you who time and time again
emptied yourselves earnestly
into nothing.