Latin’s Three Genders


"As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see."
-Walt Whitman


How is it that a woman
can wear a hat but not
a male? That a school
group may force a girl
to wear a dress
to a ceremony?
Fair that a bag
has been labeled
as feminine
and not masculine?

It is all neuter, I say.

It all collides in a bang
scientists call big
like Eve’s apple
hitting the ground,
wind being
the experiment control,
atoms flying like screams
of pro-choice, pro-life,
gay marriage anti’s
and pro’s,

like atoms that are all
the same,
all the same.

Male and female
submerge and both
stare into the
Hermaphroditic mirror
like Whitman,

hands folded over the breast,
the neuter he sees.