One Stanza Poem O180

I wish that
Nova Scotian women –
Would give me a tenth
Of a chance –
They give to local men –
When it came to romance

10.08.16

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Copyright by Minh Tan on listed dated of completion.

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Notes to this poem…

By the numbers, they’d give me about a seventh, if you had tried matchmaking sites that allowed you to use race as a deal breaker rather than a preference. Perfect Match was once king of the computer matchmaking world in the mid to late 2000s. When I tried that, only 1 in 7 women in the pool were interested in my Asian profile versus the Caucasian one that answered everything in the same way… and didn’t even have a photo that should have creeped out some of those women! That was when I basically gave up trying to date here, cause I deserved far better than that for who and what I am as a person. And I have lots of proof of dating success, even when not trying to find dates, elsewhere on my travels and while living in Vancouver that’s not nearly as old fashioned and conservative as Nova Scotia.

But the 1/7 sure felt like a lot less in real life cause those who weren’t interested weren’t exactly a fair representation of women in the population. They were far more on the less appealing side so that if I didn’t go for that standard, it was far worse than 1/7, in which case, my wish for 1/10 was then truly a fair wish.

I’ve made a good and happy life for myself without significant other love since and am a much happier person today than when I was trying to date and having to deal with all this bias.

The O-series of poems are one stanza poems composed before I got onto writing haiku and tanka, and short poetry while in action or traveling by select means like plane or ferry. These poems are 3-9 lines long with at least one rhyming couplet, and not of the short forms just mentioned. For the sake of elegance, I just called the collection One.

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