poetry

Three Generations
by Karina Africa-Bolasco

A woman knows two kinds
of men in her life

The Father.
He who likes his woman
to wait on him:
tend his home,
cook his food,
launder his clothes,
bear his children,
pray for him.

And the Husband.
He who alleges he likes his woman
to compete with him:
earn as much, but not more
for when she does
a thousand terrible things can happen.

Between them, a woman caught
struggles to be free.
Perhaps distraught,
but then also taught
by Circumstance
the ways to liberate
her son
from concocting a third version
of the same Order.

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