Rage is so Respectable
Rage is so respectable. Her top hat’s
made of smoking coals. She strides
the streets and kicks small sheep.
She knits up snarls on telephone poles.
She breathes in daisies, snorts
out ash. Her house is made of corners,
boned with whale. She turns on you
so quickly that she tops the sport Whiplash.
She combs her hair with matches
so the sparks light funeral pyres. Her invitation list
is stuffed with Holocaust deniers.
Her snack’s a cat. The dump’s her park.
Invite Rage to your home and spoons
melt, morph into knives. Her talons shred your rugs.
Lava swamps your tub. You’re lucky
if your puppy can recoil and stay alive.
Rage will not turn to butterflies.
She will not win you laurels.
She never sings. She harpy-cries.
She makes her soup from quarrels.
I turn her from my hardening heart
when she exhorts, “contend!”
I’ll cuddle into disrepute,
accept offence, and end.
Mary Ann Dimand was born in Southern Illinois where Union North met Confederate South, and her work is shaped by kinships and conflicts: economics and theology, farming and feminism and history. Dimand holds an MA in economics from Carleton University, an MPhil from Yale University, and an MDiv from Iliff School of Theology. Some of her previous publication credits include: The History of Game Theory Volume I: From the Beginnings to 1945; The Foundations of Game Theory; and Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics, among others. Her work is published or forthcoming in Apricity Magazine, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Bitterzoet Magazine, The Borfski Press, The Broken Plate, Chapter House Journal, Euphony Journal, Faultline, FRiGG Magazine, From Sac, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Hungry Chimera, Isacoustic, The MacGuffin, Mantis, Misfit Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, Penumbra, Plainsongs, RAW Journal of the Arts, Scarlet Leaf Review, Slab, Sweet Tree Review, THINK: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Essays, and Tulane Review.