Sisters Are Doing It & More

by Myles Weber (August 2025)

Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves
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Superb vocalists both—our Annie and Aretha—
made the boast in a hit song produced and co-written
by David Stewart, the bearded sister
who laid down backing tracks on keyboards and guitar.
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Mike and Nathan covered lead and bass,
Stan tapped the drums,
with the organ tuned by Mr. Benmont Tench.
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That’s seven sisters in bold collaboration.
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In the same era, when critics on occasion slipped the truth
past editor and publisher,
Pauline Kael panned a weepy women’s flick.
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Sisters are doing it to themselves was her complaint.
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The 1980s. Back then they let you keep your job.
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Walk It Back
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The Polish poet so regretted
—her Stalin phase
—her Stalin praise
she pulped her early collections.
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She’d never gone on the attack
—making fists
—making lists
to end careers
much less terminate the lives of others.
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To be honest, the poet hadn’t much to walk back.
No more than
—tacit walking
—tacit talking
did she include in later books.
She let her silence whisper for her.
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In our land honored artists
—culpability retraced
—culpability embraced
walk it forward because we laud them.
Everyone is shameless here.
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Icelandic Bishop
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Two female therapists welcome to the podcast
a gay man from Iceland who hopes to end the mutilation.
He explains, through the accent, a compatriot bishop
has a transgender son and the bishop’s sister has one too.
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We’re not allowed to talk about social contagion.
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Their guest has more to say on the matter
but the interviewers, while sympathetic, interrupt.
This much is certain: Up north faith is shifting.
Transgender Jesus decorates buses,
imparted silicone breasts by the church.
The bishop and the sister are both proud parents,
but—hear me out—exceedingly so? I’m curious,
should the cousins recant in tandem (or just one),
what sort of treatment do apostates receive?
The therapists suppress the most pertinent question
about these Nordic children: Were they spared the knife?
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The Jogger
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We’re not allowed to spell it out.
The facts could forge a warped conviction.
Indictments are subliminal.
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The jogger made her final run.
A foreign man produced a knife.
Take care: Protect the criminal
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who lacks the proper documents.
Arraignments cause embarrassment.
We’re trapped within the liminal
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pursuing justice for the girl,
denouncing not the man embroiled.
The effort made is minimal.
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A Dissident Voice
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Fully four coworkers of twenty-two on staff
react boisterously to their own attempts at wit.
In our northern state, Scandinavians and Finns,
native to the region, hold their mouths.
It’s reverse carpetbaggers like the two from Tennessee
who act in defiance of local convention.
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I’ve got their number. They function as a mob.
Eighteen silent collaborators
pretend self-applauding habits aren’t gauche.
These rubes plainly smile when the loudest member
founders attempting to land a joke,
her subsequent cacophony meant to cover her faux pas.
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To thrive as a dissident voice, I don’t chortle.
(It’s hardly my habit to respond to my own quips.)
I stepped in a maw when I wrote a biting essay
before receiving pre-clearance from the group.
Were I to snigger, they would mock my jolly tone.
I don’t need their protection—I prefer to glower.
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Myles Weber is a professor of English at Winona State University in Minnesota and the author of the scholarly monograph Consuming Silences: How We Read Authors Who Don’t Publish (U of Georgia Press).

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