We live our entire lives in the punchline of a joke --
one we hear only faintly, from the opposite end of the room,
uttered in tenor and baritone and bass and sometimes even alto barbershop quartets,
accompanied by hand gestures creative and lewd,
and when we scream from inside the joke because we at least want to hear it,
(although it would sound the way your own chewing sounds inside your head)
well then we must be
hysterical
bossy
hysterical
imaginary
hysterical
and certainly on the rag.

*then you have already mastered the simple practice of benefiting from the work of terrible men without condoning their terrible actions. It is possible to hold that a creation is good and the creator is partly or entirely bad at the same time. These concepts do not contradict one another.
So why
do we denounce
the art of artists
who do bad things?

What is the word for
the lone woman in
a group of men, the one who
does not receive a handshake ​and who
is not asked the questions?

I don't know but
in the language of the island where
​my foremothers lived:
​
in a room of a thousand women
one man
​makes the group masculine.