RED TEAM VERSUS RED TEAM

by Shannon Anthony

Sounds like your party has a civil war

or self-implosion theme. Unfriendly fire:

Your taco bar comes with razor wire.

So now briefly, you are chiefly

claiming that your camp is

against the heartland champs

because the one point of Barbie, that doll,

is to be here to cheer, not cheered at all.

And because she once spoke

and you're proudly unwoke

you're rooting for the 49ers

to kiss the ring where the sun don't shine

forgetting every bad thing you ever said

about the city that gave you Nancy.

Cognitive dissonance and decline: Go red!

Knock yourself out with your bash (nothing fancy).

I think you'd agree I've got that right.

(I'm not male, but not pregnant, and I'm white.)

If you come to (such as they are) your senses

you'll see that concussions have consequences.

You're not immune, and this isn't a kingdom.

What happens in Vegas is just a symptom,

another test we'll hear he aced. Remember

the Big Game: That happens in November.

Shannon Anthony lives in Minneapolis.

LET HER WEAR GREEN

by Tricia Knoll

Did the ‘Barbie’ Movie Cause a Pink Paint Shortage? The film recreates the famous doll’s brightly colored world—with the help of one specific shade of pink. —Smithsonian, June 8, 2023

Witness a shortage 

of pink paint

from the set design

of a Barbie movie. 

 

Let her wear green

for chlorophyll,

eco-warrior for a hurting

planet short on good sense

 

as cancer drugs are hard

to come by. This rainbow

month colors fly

 

on flagpoles and banners. 

I’m so sick of pink. The only

Barbie I have sits in a wheelchair;

she is a woman of color

 

beautiful color. 

Barbie Fashionistas Doll #166 With Wheelchair & Crimped Brunette Hair

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet well beyond Barbie years. Her work appears widely in journals, anthologies, and seven collections—the most recent being One Bent Twig (FutureCycle Press, 2023) which brings together poems about about trees she has planted, loved, or worries about due to climate change.

MY BODY

by Claire Sapan

In bed each night I am grateful for the body that is mine: 

Skin that protects me, allows me to feel 

Tongue that gives me taste 

Heart that allows me to feel 

But somewhere along the way you decided my body

Was yours

You disassemble me 

Like a Barbie

Bending me in your direction 

At your discretion

Breaking off what you don’t like 

And today you took my choice 

You took autonomy away from me, 

From my body 

So tonight in bed I will mourn 

But tomorrow I will fight 

For at the end of the day, 

This body is mine

Claire Sapan is an avid writer and feminist, hoping and fighting for a better world. 

MESSAGE FROM FRIDA KAHLO

upon learning Mattel is producing a Barbie Doll in her image

by Tracey Gratch

Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair by Frida Kahlo. Barbie® Inspiring Women™ Frida Kahlo Doll.

Banal attempts at re-creation fail.
What minds would mold me, plastic, sweet and frail?
I’ve eclipsed your constructs, circumvented your ideal;
My likeness etched in psyches, read like braille.
Though capitalistic plots may garner some appeal—
I muse at this pale folly; truth lies in detail.


Tracey Gratch lives just south of Boston with her husband and their four children. Her poems have appeared or are scheduled to appear in publications including Post Road, Mezzo Cammin, The Literary Bohemian, Annals of Internal Medicine, Boston Literary Magazine, TheNewVerse.News, and The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. Her poem "Strong Woman" is included in On Being A Doctor, Volume 4, from the American College of Physicians.

THE SUPPORT OF SPORTS

by Tricia Knoll

The raffle of an AR-15 assault rifle to raise money for the Saint Helens Girls Softball League will get a public airing at a community meeting Thursday. --Stuart Tomlinson, The Oregonian,  March 20, 2013

I pulled a red Radio Flyer wagon
full of Girl Scout cookies from door to door --
when doors opened with smiles
we assumed were safe.

Despite my wicked field hockey stick,
in high school my only role I could play in sports
was timing the breast stroke in boy’s swimming meets.
Then I bought bras with a label saying Title IX --

and yes, I bought a Barbie Doll or two
for my daughter -- and watched without dismay
when the cattle dog chewed off an arm and then a leg.
I’ve sold dozens of dozens of tulips to raise

money for a high school trip to Paraguay
and delivered those bouquets in a mail cart
to workers’ desks in an office tower
for a month. Flimsy wrapping paper --

we sold that too. Silk-screened t-shirts
for soccer. Chocolate bars for track.
Magazine subscriptions for volleyball. Florida
oranges by the crate, delivered to front doors.

Joannie Benoit won gold in the first
women’s Olympic marathon -- a big moment
for this plowhorse-style distance runner.
Young girls, find your road to fitness,
sweat, movement, teamwork,
combat if you want it.

But please don’t raffle rifles.


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet with a long, long love of sport and movement.