HIS AND HERS

I've only read 30-something pages of the book so far, and two poems came right out. Here's the first:

To My Husband
J.B. Rowell

My eyes and brain
are programmed to ask:
What is it?

Yours to figure out:
Where it is now, going, how fast,
faster?

As a child, your crayon,
a single, cool color
an instrument
for recreating motion,
a crash.

I selected a variety
of warm hues to create a scene
with people, pets, plants
all facing the viewer.

Interconnecting areas
of the brain, my verbal
capacity is spread
between both
hemispheres.

If you had a stroke
on the left, you’d
lose a chunk of speech,
on the right, you’d talk
just fine.

My point, is only
that you compartmentalize,
and now I can forgive you
for not being able
to watch TV
and talk to me
at the same time,

will stop asking our son
to add more color
and about who is behind
the wheel
of the rocket, truck, racecar,
in the black scribble.

Our son draws verbs.

Our daughter, nouns.

And we did nothing to make them
this way, did not fail
at gender neutrality.

He watched the mobile. She
clung to my face.

And that’s ok,
because that’s how they're made.