Poetry

Every Cell

Andrew Lansdown

While women try to leap it,

the gorge between the genders,

men mostly stand and gape.

O, that gorgeous otherness,

wider than ideology’s lies!

 

Breast, larynx and brain,

hip, heart and thigh—every cell

in every part of every woman

is female, feminine, familiar-foreign—

every cell is chromosomed double-X.

 

O! No wonder men stagger

with attraction and astonishment,

all their cells and senses

calling, yearning, crying,

The second X is the reason Y!