Sometimes
poems are the poor lighting and littered floors of a laundromat on an
avenue of forceps born on poles by two dudes. Other times they are
flights of stairs on Lexington or mere brahamins known as equestrian
cogs parading through laundromats on generic trojan horses filled with
aluminum cans. If you are prone to abusing alcohol, typically your
poems will be printhead coifeuses whelmed by the turnstiles of form rejection letters. Some will enlighten freshmen enough to move
in with mongers. I remember my first writing assignment. We had a bible
and a rented room decorated with these dirt-bag moustaches just to the
right of the doorstep. They watched us write through the peeled paint
on the windows. Suckers from the bluegrass sluiced gold from sediment
in the bathroom. You could sleep with the door open there. And to think
the archdioces had the same archaic floorboards in his rich bastion
midtown loft with front door all covered in slide locks. And he’s
the closest thing to a pope! You look at someone funny down there and
you get shot. Not enough people get shot in poems these days.