O merriest, wiliest, and holiest of harlots! ~ Edward IV
The poet works the room the way she works words
while her students lead thesauresed lives,
ape tropes poached from livid legends,
glean new meaning from stale and stolen selves:
the somnolent Teutonic wag, for one,
who trails in the wake of his dark, sarcastic,
loquacious comrade in barbèd harms
whose eyes aim not to see but to shield;
or the white-eyed teen in flannel
and jeans whose threadbare knees
have been patched/repatched not in fashion
but in desperate needling for attention;
or the goateed sculptor who has no further wont
of cheap whiskey to indulge intoxication,
bound for little beyond some boozing end
as read in Hemingway, Faulkner, or Bukowski—
bound, rather, to be Anne Sexton
bound to be depressed,
and famous,
and brilliant,
and adored,
and abusive,
and die in a garage.
Would he not rather be Jane-but-not-that-Jane,
and be sparkling,
keen-witted,
and buxom,
as waves of adulant attention
wash over her in a redolent glow?
Yes, even men would like to be Jane.
In this way are rooms—and words—wrought.