Unemployed, Dating, Self-Esteem Issues
I wish I was naked with you,
but when I am naked with you
I wish I was invisible.
But you might find me by touch,
so I wish I were room temperature.
But you might find me by smell
so I wish I was sleeping in your bed for a week beforehand.
But you might find me by sound
so I wish to hold my breath for as long as it takes
for you to fall asleep waiting for me to come back
from wherever you think I vanished to.
But when I reappear, I would have no present
and you would think I had gone somewhere and returned empty-handed
and that empty-handed sheepishness
is why my self-esteem is so low.
That is why I am not answering your phone calls.
Disney women of the 1980s
The women of Disney’s Saturday morning cartoons were not princesses.
They lived serious lives and were empowered, but somehow we have forgotten them. We should remember three: Gadget Hackwrench, Rebecca Cunningham, Sunni Gummi.
Gadget Hackwrench was a S.T.E.M. gearhead who maintained an airship. She soldered spy equipment. She could drive, off-road, every vehicle that fit a mouse. She dressed in mechanic’s coveralls and was the only Rescue Ranger who wasn’t obsessed with their own image.
Rebecca Cunningham was a single parent who ran a shipping company. She owned a plane. She masterminded supply chain management, international trade regulations, and her daughter’s PTA. Her main employee was a man who starred in a movie without a single female protagonist and she was uncompromisingly his boss. And she did all of these things on screen.
Sunni Gummi infiltrated human castles and posed as a princess, boy crazy and a bit servile to a blonde rich girl until she learned some Hawthornian lessons about life. She became a talented squire, and devised plans on behalf of teenage girls that outwitted politicians, patricians, and her own favoured brothers. She was a savant flute player. She fought with monsters, bare-fisted.She fought with men, naively, but unflinchingly, a pawn played by an older human princess to deflect the violence of Machiavels.
But she represented more than a throwaway piece because no mere pawn could do these things in an urbane world and return home to a rustic family of druids and Gnostic secrets with dignity.
They are not prissy movie princesses. The role model women of Disney were everyday women of Saturday morning.
Let’s talk about working class breakfast cereal and break the chains of royal popcorn. Let’s ask where these women vanished to when we went to college.
Why did we stay silent about their absences when they were replaced in the 1990s by shows named after men like Squarepants, Doug, and other Nickelodeon disappointments?
Why did we let our fascination transfix us on the vapid Disney instead of the empowering one?
Two Magics
Your fairy godmother has a spell to give you an enchanted pizza topping in your suburban driveway. She throws sparkles over a semper vivum.
It stretches and inflates into an egg on a stem. Voila Bipitty bopitty artichoke. A prince steps out of his Range Rover with a Vessi in his handcasting chill.
Netflix looks around.
Terry Trowbridge has appeared in Synchronized Chaos before. He has some grant funding from the Ontario Arts Council and hopes that more poets can benefit from their programs in the next cycle (and Terry votes).
