Lois Lane
David Moolten
———–For Shira
Your father was Superman, could do anything,
just no wrong, your mother Lois Lane,
saw him for who he was, and reported
none of it to you. Brusquer than a speeding bullet,
but secretly, when you went to bed, he didn’t
have to smother her with the clear thin air
near the stars to be her glass ceiling.
She not only endured, she excused
his dinner no-shows, the unexplained hang-ups,
made sure her small remarks sailed
over your head, protected him like a source
of whatever was good or at least heedless
in your life. Fourteen years she grilled
his cheese and washed his socks, just the job
for a strong woman, the way you can have more
Pulitzers than the Times and because a guy
you love slaps on glasses, spend eternity
in the funnies laughing every time
someone mentions a resemblance.
When he showed up at her door after leaving
and getting left, it was justice
not some green rock that brought him
to his knees, he of the x-ray vision
who never could look her in the eye.
David Moolten has published three books of verse. His last, Primitive Mood, won the T. S. Eliot Prize (Truman State University Press, 2009). His chapbook, The Moirologist, won the 2023 Poetry International Winter Chapbook Competition and is forthcoming. A physician specializing in transfusion medicine, he lives in Philadelphia.
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