“Real Men Don’t Take No Shit From Nobody” by Janice D. Soderling

Janice D. Soderling

REAL MEN DON’T TAKE NO SHIT FROM NOBODY

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

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Janice D. Soderling: “Unless they have been sanitized, nursery rhymes have a dark edge. The cradle will fall; the cupboard was bare; she had so many children, she didn’t know what to do. I overheard someone claim wife-battering was a class and ethical issue. I’ve worked at a shelter and know better. The old rhyme ‘Rich man, poor man’ popped into my mind and I heard the trochaic punches: POW and POW and POW and the metrical change of the finale, the spondee closure—graveyard. It writ itself; I just got it down on paper.”