Jessy Randall

If I'm driving in the middle of nowhere and it's dark and there are no cars in sight and I see a stop sign, I still stop at it. My relationship with actual disobedience is not a close one. In my mind, however, I have disobedient thoughts almost constantly.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

TOC | Next

The Gender Argument

“The word Kleidung
takes the masculine der,
not the feminine die,”
said Frau Wimmers.

I asked why.

“Because those are the rules
of German grammar. And
Katzen is plural, so it takes die, too.”

“I think it should take das,”
I said. “I think it should change
from day to day.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think,
it’s die,” the teacher said.

“But it does matter,” I said.
“Nothing matters more
than what I think,
what people think.
People are the ones
who make these rules!”

“Mädchen takes das.
Hase takes der. You
are going to fail this class.”

“Fine,” I said, and took my F.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Jessy Randall last appeared in Poemeleon in 2009. Her latest book is There Was an Old Woman (Unicorn Press, forthcoming 2015). She's a librarian at Colorado College and her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/