Teen Vogue
argues Karl Marx
and I weep, carefully
blotting tears
with rice paper
so I won’t ruin
my foundation;

while a 16 year old
orders elitists
to panic, to action, to account
for climate decimation
and I smile,
but not too widely,
and slowly so lipstick won’t
smear on my teeth;

and when I realized
my age made me
societally obsolete
with the force
of a rip current
I quit shaving my legs
and burned a city
to the ground.

Tamara Fricke is the 2010 co-winner of the Gertrude Claytor Award of the Academy of American Poets and is previously published by The Lyon Review, Meat for Tea, Attack Bear Press Poetry Vending Machine, Whisper and the Roar, We Will Not Be Silenced, and has been included in a number of compilations.  Her poetry chapbook Our Requiem was released in 2014.  She lives in Springfield, MA, with an ungrateful cat, where she writes grants professionally.