by Michelle DeRose
On the DOD placing Julianne Moore’s Freckleface Strawberry under “compliance review” in Pentagon schools.
We hereby commit to fight freckles fearlessly.
The Pentagon’s five year-olds are too young
to learn that some are born freckled,
or that some assigned freckleface at birth
fade with age: it’s our official position
that none may transition. Further,
the book’s fruitist agenda betrays its bias
by elevating only the strawberry. We cannot
in good conscience allow any book
that won’t praise the apple in our curriculum.
We find additional offense in the redheads:
a clear red cap trademark violation.
Finally, the author’s first name puts two women
together. We vow to end such indoctrination!
Michelle DeRose, Professor Emerita of English, lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her poetry won the Chancellor's Prize in 2024 and the Faruq Z Bey award in 2023 from the Poetry Society of Michigan, and her chapbooks were finalists in the 2023 and 2024 Michigan Writers Cooperative Press competition.
