T.S. Hidalgo’s most recent poem to appear here was “Separatists” (November 2019).

Lolita’s Store
By T.S. Hidalgo

It’s usually argued:
the Old World descends, say, from Jerusalem, from Athens;
misogynist really, since the dawn of time,
i.e. droit du seigneur, or burning of adulteresses.
In Ancient Greece,
the nobles had a predilection for their ephebos
(from behind . . . is that love too?),
with the females relegated to a secondary circle;
in the sacred scriptures they’re referred to as vipers,
synonym of perdition
(word of God).
Taking it to an extreme and familiar case,
we find misogynists like Voltaire, like Frederick the Great,
proponents of enlightened absolutism.
Ehh . . . I’m not sure,
in the same boat as well, perhaps, Mallarmé
(“Perdition was my Beatrice”).
In that way even Marx, even Engels:
women stopped then from being marked territory.
Are you not going directly home today, sir?
Well . . . You can always hire someone.