Tonight's Poet Corner: The Antithesis Of Karen

The Antithesis Of Karen
by Belinda Roddie

She's polite to all the waiters,
and the cashiers and managers.
She's got the undercut instead
of the jaw-length A-line bob: no bad,
chunky highlights. She foregoes
pyramid schemes for a nine to five, drinks
beer instead of sparkling wine, and insists
on vaccinating every single one of her
future children on time.

I read a post somewhere that claimed that
calling a middle-aged white woman "Karen"
was equivalent to a racial slur, and I wish
I could remind that that if you can't say
anything past the letter n for the word we're
all thinking about, but you can name a
"I want to speak to your manager" bitch
fretting over the price of brussel sprouts
in a grocery store Karen, I have a pretty
safe idea of what the actual slur is.

So does she, and when we're alone,
she paints rainbows up and down her arm
because of course, everyone I dote on has
to be so fucking gay that they barely function.
She is the antithesis of Karen, yet she keeps
the moniker and is happy to subvert
expectations. Even if it means sometimes
going by "Kay" for Starbucks orders, which,
and I won't fault her for it, can be rather
complicated (and also rather delicious).