The Good Girl Soldiers On

by Cynthia Anderson


My brother turns the key in my back
and I’m off, a mechanical doll—
Look at me go! You’d never know

I’m not real. My sleep eyes close.
I eat real food, cry real tears.
Chatty Cathy! My brother claps,

frowns when I stutter and stop.
I’m a locked drawer, a diary,
an army of one. Down below,

my German forebears thwack
their belts. They’re waiting.
They’ll wait till the Rapture.

Because there’s no girl
as good as me.


* * * * *

Cynthia Anderson has published ten poetry collections, most recently The Missing Peace (Velvet Dusk Publishing, 2021). Her poems frequently appear in journals and anthologies, and she is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. In 2020, she took up short form poetry and since then has been exploring haiku, senryu, cherita, and related forms. Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens. She makes her home in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park. www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com