Enigma

My father came 

in the footsteps

of a post-war survivor 

distracted by demons.

He seemed to care

in obscure ways,

difficult to discern

as I much preferred 

tangible hugs.

He did his dutiful best 

to provide for me by hard

work, his insignia for love. 

Since he decoded caring as 

Maintenance, he checked 

the frequency of my bowel 

movements as a baby 

to measure my well-being 

like a mechanic 

dips an oil stick. He once

showed emotion when he

punched trash cans

in the alley after I had

an all-nighter prom, an

unfamiliar tradition 

in the islands. Still shocked

by his departure from military

restraint, I don’t know if he

was angry or relieved

when I came home so late. 

As an adult, I settled for 

the unsolved mystery that 

was my father. Beginning 

with hugs, I cared for 

the old man until his 

last days in the ways 

I had wanted for myself.    

© Patsy Asunción, 2019

Expectant fathers being instructed on diaper changing
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Anastasia Puscian/Released
from Wikimedia Commons

Writing on the Wall

Trace chalk dust memorializes

my childhood blackboard. Washable, 

no-muss markers replace broken 

crayons in tin cans in my old 

Chicago brick school house.

Capital and lower-case cursive 

letters on my elementary class 

walls pushed penmanship, no 

longer required by tech teaching 

and digitized communication.

I input my password on today’s

screen to catch news bytes, poke

family and friends, travel to virtual 

Ireland, and print anything – guns to 

gowns, from my 3D printer. The only

scene that hasn’t changed since 

I was a Windy City school girl is 

the news – Russian-American tension, 

Arab-Israeli conflict, world hunger, 

end-of-the-world pollution. Will there

be an app developed to fix 

the human condition?

© Patsy Asunción, 2018

Abandoned school in New Orleans
Photo by Tiffany Bailey
from Wikimedia Commons

Math for Girls Counts

Before they were great, great grandmothers, they stood 

in lines for singular equality, for one scale blind 

to gender, creed or color. But, their right 

to vote was delayed until 1920 – 144 years after

propertied White men, 51 years after Black men,

as if women were mere household amenities

used as conveniences.

The vote hoped to move the line closer 

to a public voice in fiscal and sexual values,  

but it took sixteen more years to change 

birth control info from obscene 

to legal mail (hidden in plain brown envelopes)

to head-of-the-household husbands,

a married man the only 

Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. 

Connecticut’s 1965 defeat freed the pill 

only for the sanctified wedded. I remember 

unmarried, pregnant girls, 

shamed and blamed for bad choices, 

while the boys were just being boys. 

The 1982 ERA defeat subtracted sixty years 

of female rights. One hundred years since suffrage,

fifteen states still have not ratified ERA,

now a dusty museum piece. 

Defeat meant I had no credit, no bank account, 

no property without my husband’s name, addressed as 

Mrs. John Doe, my first name unimportant,

a nondescript dustpan beneath spousal steps.

Reduced fraction of 1973’s Roe vs. Wade, reproductive rights 

are not in the corporate equation that controls

choice as newly-deemed religious bodies, 

a catch-22 where working women have zero say. 

Despite the centuries-old male monopoly, women have 

done the math – equal means equal, not less than.

© Patsy Asunción, 2017

"The Awakening" by Henry Mayer, 1915
Restoration copyright by Adam Cuerden
from Wikimedia Commons 

Price Range

All grown-ups were children first. (But 

few remember it.)

                ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

The one-of-a-kind heirloom

under glass is roped off,

a proper distance

from museum onlookers

who afford a pocket-sized price

to applaud, not hold

dear to heart,

trumpeted treasure.

The search for fulfilling riches

at reasonable cost

overflows to streets

onto big-box stores and back-alley

vendors with knock-off deals.

Possessions glitter the path to satisfied

heartbeats despite night’s

isolation.

Having more seems happier

for many adults.

Once they’ve outgrown Neverland,

men and women get painted over

by agendas,

forget how to feed themselves 

with hearty nourishment freely given

by fairies, pirates, and mermaids.

Lost from to-do lists is one-of-a-kind Pan, 

clad in skeleton leaves

and juices that flow from trees, 

who keeps his heart forever young.

© Patsy Asunción, 2017

 Pan and Wendy, cover, 1915
from Wikimedia Commons