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You are here: Home / 47 / Why Can’t Middle Age Be Like Childhood But with Sex, Liquor and Hipper Boots

Why Can’t Middle Age Be Like Childhood But with Sex, Liquor and Hipper Boots

47, Poetry by Joanna Fuhrman

Some days all I need to be happy is a subway seat 
and a Diet Dr Pepper. Other days I’m waiting 

for the fog to spell out my name (it never happens).
I want to believe in the bulbous green spaces

between my emotions, that mythical quietness 
where baby ducks waddle and hide cloud babies 

under their wings, but then anger shows up again, 
dressed like an old-fashioned nun from a dayglo 

comic book, carrying a yapping chihuahua in her 
black patent handbag. She wants to punch 

the sunset, wants the moonlight to whiten her teeth 
but all the groaning in her bones gets in the way. 

Why can’t middle age be like that TV show 
where the ending comes at the beginning? 

Everyone knows it’s going to be tragic, so why not 
show that first. Then we can focus on the love story—

the center of the desk drawer’s wrapped truffle,
the bodega kitten’s upstretched off-white neck.


Joanna Fuhrman is the author of six books of poetry, most recently To a New Era (Hanging Loose Press 2021).  She teaches creative writing at Rutgers and lives in Brooklyn.

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(Bloomsbury 2019).

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