Long after the Avengers have obliterated Thanos
and Ant Man has saved the Quantum Realm,
after the Vibranium is secured by Wakanda
and the Guardians of the Galaxy protect the universe again,
the Russo brothers return to the silver screen
with their newest hero, WordWoman, disguised
as a middle-aged mother and wife.
She wields a pen. A journal. A library of slender books.
No one would ever suspect she could be a hero,
least of all her. Heck, she can’t even keep the rodents
out of her garden, much less root the evil out of the world.
Audiences yawn as they watch her sit at her kitchen counter
in her slouchy sweater and wool slippers. For hours.
“Where’s the action?” someone shouts as he gets up
for another bucket of buttered popcorn.
That’s when Stan Lee shows up as the UPS man,
shocking everyone, and he delivers her a copy
of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. Cut to the next scene,
she’s in a black pleather bodysuit wearing lots of mascara,
a dark ponytail high on her head streaked with silver.
She’s ripped and ready to do what it takes to make peace.
“Was that Neruda?” someone whispers in the front aisle
as she slings poems, one after another,
stunning her enemies into silence.
“I think Amichai,” someone says. “Or Shihab Nye.”
When the movie is over, most people are grumbling
that superheroes just aren’t what they used to be.
But in the back, perhaps, a young girl is scribbling
words on a napkin. She’s ready to save the world.