Because I’m a Pirate

Gentle readers, I begin by excusing this poemlogue’s brevity by telling you that the time is drawing nigh. And by nigh, I mean that Top Chef is coming on in twenty minutes, and, well, I’ve been bribing myself to endure inane task after inane task with the possibility of Top Chef viewing all day long. And so, gentle readers, I ask, in poemlogue, for you to consider one of the biggest industries in the United States: the self-help book industry. Particularly, self-help books for singles. Particularly, self-help books for single women. One of which is In the Meantime, from which the title of this poem is taken. Though Ms. Vanzant does offer some excellent tips about psychological housecleaning, she has not, as of yet, offered tips about a more pressing question, which is this: “So, Ms. Vanzant, while I’m cleaning my psychological house in the meantime so that I may stop hating myself, as you urge, and open myself up to love’s open doors, what the hell am I supposed to say about the billion friends and relatives and television shows and notary publics and door-to-door vacuum salesmen and bug men who fumigate my apartment who all, all, ALL urge me on a nearly hourly basis to take the damn gloves off already, throw out the Pledge, and marry whomever I can find to marry so that I can make some babies already?”

In case you doubt that this pressure exists in this modern day and age, I offer you two of Google image’s first offerings for the term “single women.” Yes, that is a woman holding up a sperm bank. Clever. Clever. I beg of you, however, not to Google this term, as you will find some unexpected images, including, shockingly, Brit Brit’s non-fuzzy mimosa.

Love’s Got Everything to Do with the Meantime

[Arrggh.]