Ratchet

“…Ratchet.”

My foster daughter’s teenage voice carries

From dining room to living room, where I

Am grading papers written and composed

By our nation’s future: a bleak future

Bereft of active verbs, and ignorant

Of simple subject-verb agreement forms.

“I’m sorry, my dear, I could not hear.

You need a ratchet for what?”

                                               

                                                 “No, ratchet

Was what I called my lunch at school today.

Salibury steak.  I hate it; it was ratchet.”

Ratchet: a potent denunciation

Pronounced as if by imperial decree –

A condemnation weakened not one bit

By its selection yesterday to say

That she does not like Number 2 pencils:

“Those wood pencils are so ratchet!  I like

The mechanical ones.”

I once attempted to argue the point.

I have, of course, logic and lexicon

On my side.

                     “Ratchet is a simple tool

That you might use to turn a socket screw.

The word you want is wretched, dear – a word

That really applies not here.  Your pencil

May be impractical or cumbersome,

Inconvenient or even redundant,

But wretched it is not, much less ratchet.

Everything you hate or mildly dislike

You curse with the same epithet: Ratchet.

Whether Salisbury steak, or wooden pencils,

Or homework from your dreaded math lesson,

The girl you do not like, the mangy dog

That followed you home from your walk today,

Your sister, whose sharp, incessant singing

Interrupted the movie you were streaming,

All these things you convicted as ratchet.

It’s not the word so much I hate; I accept

That new descriptors enter our language

All the time – words that gift our speech and life

With color.  What I hate is that this word

Is your catch-all adjective that keeps you

From using or needing to use the wealth

Of words that might be summoned only by

A little thought.  What if, instead of ratchet,

Your lunch was tasteless, the dog pitiful,

Your sister’s voice cacophonous, horrid

That girl at school pestiferous or foul?

What language could you employ to brighten

Otherwise monotonous and mundane

Exchanges in the course of human life!”

She did not hear my words, of course, my plea

To her was as the loud, noisome rambling

Of a neurotic lunatic from some

Cheap and mediocre melodrama.

To her, I am old.  My ways are old too.

They are useless, pointless, forgotten.

Or, in other words, they are

Ratchet.