by Tibni Reth

In the midst of a worldwide pandemic,
life and work were expected to be perfect.
Out of nowhere, an enemy came
unseen to create a “passing” problem like magic.
From which in the ultimate,
a person should have much gratitude.
Then, all mandated isolation and hunker-down
orders evolved into forced domesticity.
While all the stores which feed domestic dreams
go bankrupt like wild.
Unthinkable that everyone turned
into a housewife, even the species of male.

Gone are home stores like Bed Bath and Beyond;
also Pier One, all gone like magic.
Revealing in secret that the one crying the
hardest & loudest is the manly male!
Perhaps, then, he won’t be required to be
a king of domesticity.
He is to accept what he is turning into with gratitude.
When all he wants to do is to attend
happy hour and go hog wild.
As everyone knows what a boy considers
days or nights that are perfect.
When the homebound guy is…

well, home, he won’t think it’s wild.
To look up what sestina means, even when it sounds like
another ‘s’ word that’s perfect.
With one too proud to ask for directions—
quite like the typical male.
Whatever is not found,
he still finds it best to have gratitude.

What’s so twisted is his idea of domesticity.
Became a search for sestina that’s invisible in
the dictionary, fantastically thinking like magic.
Okay, Okay. This is not a day of bashing the male.
Neither is it a day to criticize the virtues
of vices of domesticity.
And it is ever a day for perfectionists to
strive to be perfect.
Like the saying that declares you can’t be too
rich or too thin—you can’t have too much gratitude.
Believe that the thought is not too wild.
In a world that does not believe in magic.

A typical guy is too logical to believe in magic.
The quintessential “tough dude”
is averse to domesticity.
They must love order that’s wild.
What he deems perfect.
Most females cannot regard with gratitude.
So for any other,
it’s most difficult to define what’s male.

For all my bitching and complaining,
I miss my brilliant friends who are male.
When I cannot resort to magic
I am left with a strong dose of gratitude.
The perfect panacea for what in the
world is not perfect.
One day, I plan to go wild.
In the most tranquil & harmonious domesticity.
What I wrote is my idea of a perfect home —
so full of magic.

Of a loosely-defined and chaotically-ordered
wild domesticity.
Shared with a bright male type who has
in the heart much gratitude.

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Tibni Reth is currently serving a 36-year sentence for second-degree murder in the state of Alaska. She was born in Bandung, Indonesia 57 years ago and became a naturalized citizen at the age of 12. She grew up in Southern California and graduated from Loma Linda University in California as well as from Aurora University in Illinois. Before coming to prison, she worked in health care, social work, commercial fishing, commercial driving and aviation. Among her many hobbies are cooking and travel having visited four continents and eight countries. As of this writing, she still doesn’t know what to do when she grows up.