By Jane Barnes
O children I forgot to have you
Didn’t want to be a bad parent
Like they who always said they’d
Get their revenge when I had you
But I fooled them, didn’t I? O
Children we would have had some
Fun your mommy took 65 years to
Grow up she’s almost ready to start
To write O children go back. The
Genetic terrain is rather steep
And I’ve raised you others up
Fine without bodies and when you
Sang I set you here some left
Made their fortunes but you were
dying to live in the house of a book
Jane Barnes is a New York City poet and novelist who has had work in 60 magazines and nine anthologies, lesbian and (finally) bi. Poems about Emily Dickinson are forthcoming in Wrongdoing Magazine, and Gay and Lesbian Review. She should be working on her Paris novel set in 1927.