Changeling

my favorite three-year-old princess

turns regular kid between breaths;

she can inhale popsicles on the backyard swing

and exhale a secret path through a magic forest,

tracking her narrative about eluding a mean fox to rescue twin kits, the size of peanuts.

bath follows dinner, stories follow pajamas,

the cycle of safe childhood, spun on certain;

insulated from the weird national lurch

toward alpha male claw and cage match,

women as breeding stock or disposable plastic.

this nana says fuck that.

on this independence day,

when stars and stripes form a pornstache,

i pledge my allegiance to tuille and sparkle,

a country thick with popsicle princesses

rising alongside their imaginations,

equipped to outfox foxes.