BUZZ
Self-actualization and its derivatives
were fun words
Are you feeling self-actualized today?
I’m so self-actualized
I achieved self-actualization last night
It could mean anything
Libidinous silly virtuous
Mockery just heavy enough to taste
It webbed in your mouth
Cotton candy
Today, it’s empowerment
When you allow your staff
to take on your despised task of accounting
you empower her with much-needed skill
You empower your children
to make your meals
You empower your tenants
to prune your trees
to cut your grass
My husband jokes and says
he wants to empower me
He says the household duties
the cooking
the laundry
can be completely mine
I can decide on
the colour texture style of the new carpet
The leg work will be mine
The decision will be mine
Being so empowered will give me satisfaction
Empowerment: the taste in your mouth
when you have a head cold
I think of other em words
emaciate
embattle
emasculate
embalm
Author’s Bio
Crystal Hurdle teaches English and Creative Writing at Capilano University in North Vancouver, BC. In 2007, she read from After Ted & Sylvia: poems at the International Sylvia Plath Symposium at the University of Oxford. Crystal was Fiction Editor of The Capilano Review in the late eighties and sat on its board of directors for several years. Teacher’s Pets, a teen novel in verse, was published in 2014.