First Notice
I have no regrets
for admiring a woman's beauty --
thinking of her beauty --
before I know her.
As I am not
nor have I ever been
a mind reader
I can only first notice --
know of her --
with my eyes.
An understanding --
an appreciation --
of her emotional depth
intelligence and achievement
follows with conversation
-- with the speaking
-- with the listening.
Oh, she can be a woman
out of a painting by Ruben --
or, she can be a woman
shaped like a pagan fertility fetish --
and I will find beauty in the vision.
But in no way
shape or form
does my seeing her
before knowing her
suggest I will see
nothing more
-- when we do speak
-- when we do listen.
Blaming Judy Blume
When she was nine years old
she snuck a copy of Forever
by Judy Blume from a friend
who had snuck it from an older sister.
Neither her parents nor her parents
would have allowed them that book
to read, they knew then, which is
of course, why they wanted to read it.
She says now, she knew too much
too soon from reading that book.
Her claim -- if she hadn't read
that book when she was nine,
she might not have been pregnant
after graduating high-school.
She got pregnant because
she said yes to a guy; it is possible
she said yes, lacking a sense of agency.
She got pregnant because
she didn't use birth control; it is possible
her access to such was restricted.
She complains that many who push back
want to control what her children read,
that they don't believe a parent is right,
but her position wants to control just
as much what our children read, suggesting
that we as parents aren't as qualified as she.
Because she blames a book
for making her get pregnant,
she lives in fear of the books
her children come home with.
What she really fears is that
her children will sneak a copy
of a book she has forbade them,
just as she did, because her parents
were just as authoritarian as she is now.
She wants to force us all, to live in her fear.
You read the book at nine?
You had a child at nineteen?
You blame Judy Blume's book?
Blame yourself for saying yes to him,
or blame what made you say yes.
Blame yourself for not using birth control,
or blame whatever kept you from using it,
but you can quit
blaming Judy Blume.
Marvel Girl
She doesn't see A.I. as a threat to creatives.
And yet, her cartoon-painted FB icon
looks like a not very varied variation
of the Charlton horror comic hostess
Countess Von Bludd of Scary Tales --
a melange of Joe Staton and Tom Sutton styles
is evident in the Frankenstein-ed image.
(Roy Lichtenstein stole
from a Charlton war comic
to generate his 'work'
TAKKA TAKKA!
-- and it wasn't
the only one).
She would have us believe that creatives
fear A.I. as much as Laius did fear Oedipus.
But she is in err in dismissing such fears
with such an example as that...
Laius was right to fear Oedipus
in the end, and unlike Oedipus
A.I. has no eyes to gouge out
after the deed is done us.
David Alec Knight is a Canadian writer of poetry and short stories. He grew up in Chatham, Ontario.
David has worked at a gas station, in retail hardware, as temp labour, as a groundskeeper, and on the assembly line, among other jobs over the years. A return to college has led him to spend the last ten years in healthcare as a certified PSW.
In 2021, David was recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry. His first book of poetry, The Heart Is A Hollow Organ, soon followed. His second book of poetry, LEPER MOSH, was published by Cajun Mutt Press in 2022, the first time his artwork was used for a cover.
Recent work has appeared in Verse Afire, Night Owl Narrative, Tickets To Midnight Volume 2 - It's Human, Starman Oddity Anthology - Poetry And Art Inspired By David Bowie, and Stormwash: Environmental Poems.
David sees dark and light around him in equal measure and explores that in his poetry, whether exploring working class themes, neurodivergence, addiction, urban living in conflict with Nature, and the effects all these things have on each other.
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