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The poems are too late
to retreat from the world
to dresser drawers from
binders to fire safe deposit boxes
from word of mouth,
our original internet.
They can’t take back what they say.
Or blame hormones.
They can’t take back the shiraz, the fillet mignons
the greedy have greed,
the critics critiqued
practical whimsy has gone to shit.
The poets are too late.
All those years as English schoolteachers
have boiled to this moment—slouching in cafes
critiquing volumes of their own poetry
that no longer belongs to them. The poems are treated
like in-laws.
The poets are too late to infringe copyright laws.
They’ll have to wait
150 years. Or till the pages piss themselves sepia. They’ll have to stay
in that cold café and chicken scratch.
And play it by year, they may pick
up a menu
and describe
the juices seeping in their mouths.
