At the kitchen table my daughter plays
connect the dots.
Focusing on forming
straight lines, crafting her predetermined picture.
I connect the dots. A family triangle:
husband
wife daughter
He and I form hypotenuse
an acute angle between us
obtuse, isosceles, scalene
words that sounded exotic in math class when we learned of Pythagoras.
I loved the neatness of
his theory: the simplicity
of squares and roots.
Later, Pythagoras betrayed me.
His other theory: spermism
tiny perfect humans housed in sperm.
Fathers: give essential characteristics to child
mothers: only material substrate.
I am only a house, soil to grow, only brick and stone, stagnant wood.
Aristotle agreed,
spread his sperm-thoughts through Europe.
How great men belittle us.
A little homunculus inside sperm growing to child to great man
homunculus: Latin for little man.
All children are little men,
women aren’t born but like houses, constructed.
My daughter: no longer
at the table
how could she continue to grow
from little-man homunculus
so she didn’t