Ronda Piszk Broatch
Compassion Pants, or, Don’t You Wish You Had a Pair
I am wearing my compassion pants with reinforced knees.
I practice knee-walking, to become closer to specific particulars,
like how the bear grubs through gorse and thicket when she isn’t
tonguing suet from its wire cage. I wear my compassion pants
slung low, my big girl underwear over the top peeking wrinkled
and generously, not sorry for stretch marks and billows. I roll
them up over ankles when the shit piles high. I pull them down
when the coast is clear. My compassion wears thin
at the crotch, and I’ve sewn a patch where my thighs rub.
My compassion pants say voom voom in velvety wide wale.
The President hates my pants. Bears eye my pants jealously,
raccoons come in the night to steal my pants from the laundry line.
I’ve stopped keeping suet in my pockets for this very reason.
I put my compassion on reasonably, one leg and at time.
Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.