Gwenda's new book, Lois Lane Fallout, is officially out today. I wrote this in celebration of her and of her heroine.
"Truth, Justice, and the American Way"
Truth is, his first teachers were alien ghosts,
Robot voices from a dying planet,
All cool crystalline logic, or, no,
All four-color missile-finned joy–it keeps changing.
Then there were the Americans,
Childless and with dirt beneath their fingernails.
He’d learn humility and, sure, platitudes from them,
But joy, too, so there’s that.
But in all that timeless time,
There was only one other he could turn both his faces towards
And have his telescopic microscopic solar gaze met
Eye to unblinking eye.
Not a mermaid or an Amazon,
Not a rocket-powered princess from an alternate timeline,
Her real, secret, so-misunderstood superpower
Was that she didn’t define herself in relation to him.
Save the world or save her,
Bless him, he could never tell the difference.
She could.
Truth is, she named him.
He was defined by her.