Frozen green beans on your face
Days after eyebrow plucking,
When ice, like other common proofs of civility,
Remain missing from our freezer.

Instead of camouflage gear, or a fine shako,
I gift your brother with a plastic bowl of fufu.
After all, the nutritional value of malanga
Leaps off of the chart.

Trade winds, as measured by social media,
Make most packs of wolves follow nicely.
Many hours of homework later,
All that wafts is eu de frangipani.

At day’s end, Dear One, good girls,
Like yesterday’s locomotives, stall abruptly.
Even when following procedural strictures,
Such as their mothers’ cues for smiling and nodding.