Squaretable Seminars

All you have to do is listen to the way a woman
sometimes rants to her friends about all the things
her husband does wrong while he waits on the side
holding her purse and biting his tongue

and you will know why the men in science
fiction movies who land their spaceships here
are not pictured tumbling out with a football
or wiping rocket grease off bulging biceps,

why they are always huddled behind a messenger
with palms lifted, their mouths set in anticipation,
their genitals retracted into a smooth elastic skin.


© Hannah Walleser