Elizabeth Cady Stanton Writes the Dictionary

Even Susan thought I was too radical by half,
giving women the right to sue for divorce. Hush,
I said, it will all be ours one day. A beautiful (adj.)
knife, the mind, cutting through that Victorian drivel.
My brain and Susan's voice–we were an army (noun)
of two and thousands of foot soldiers. The backdrop

(q.v.) was the (art.) civil war, emancipation, and after        

slaves were free, why not women? Marching got
us nothing, but black men got the vote. Universally (adv.)
we were screwed. Susan got back on her soapbox,
yelling about the vote, her one-note harangue. Chintz
arm chairs were not for her, Quaker virago moving (verb)
countries into a time they could not but for her yet hold.

Barbara Hamby’s poetry collections include Babel (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), chosen by Stephen Dunn to win the AWP’s Donald Hall Prize; The Alphabet of Desire (New York University Press, 1999), which won the 1998 New York University Press Prize in Poetry; and Delirium, which won the Vassar Miller Prize, The Kate Tufts Discovery Prize, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America.  She teaches poetry at Florida State University.