403. Poem: Harassment

"How Some in the Finance Industry Are Trying to Cash In on #MeToo," Business Section, NYT, 1-29-18

So these guys won't leave me alone they're waitin' at the bus stop and crowdin' around me in the supermarket how about it how about it and I got so sick of it I went to Miguel and told him the whole story to see what the family pride and joy could do and he said who knows your story and I said only Rita and he said yeah Rita the Big Mouth who took her mouth to the women's protest meeting and told your story and there was a reporter there no wonder you had all those guys after you they were quick-loan people and I say why why why they have the hots for me they're worse than convention big shots and Miguel says honey it's that story and I say how can that be when Rita didn't give any names and he said baby these are lawyers and when they hear a story with money in it they'll dig out the names and you baby you are worth plenty now because the guy who chased you around the room until you fell down turned out to be a billionaire a billionaire chasing an mother of three who after taking her broken hand to the hospital lost her cover and will lose her job and her kids baby you are worth more than half a mouse in a pizza especially now when the market for harassment is so high and I say what market and he says the justice market the justice market that's what us lawyers call the mechanism the mechanism we call it that determines the worth of jury-touching victims hot for money they can use right away and not have to wait for the end of the trial their need you know and if they have  a lot of unpaid rent and grocery bills they're not going to stop at high interest very high interest and you are at the top of that market baby and that is why you are being harassed by all those guys at the bus stop.

402. Hollis Summers said "all poems say 'look at me'"

Hollis Summers said "all poems say 'look at me'" and I believe him when I hear so many voices saying to me as I read "aren't I the most whimsical surprising imaginative speaker you ever listened to you never know what I'm going to come up with" though we know one thing it will have no surface connection with what went before which would get it called incoherent by Ezra Pound who said "good poetry must first be good prose" and since we all know good prose is coherent we've got a lot of poets, especially New York ones, saying look at me aren't I writing the worst prose you ever read and since we're not distracted by any connections we say yeah you win the whimsy prize which to E.B. White would be the ego prize and (you know because White said "leave no marks of ego on the page") get this poetry winner kicked off of his floor at the New Yorker and that would be especially satisfying to me if sensibly imaginative John Updike, master of prose and New Yorker light verse and E. B. White's student there, did the kicking satisfying but not perfectly satisfying because my restricting coherence to "surface connections" above leaves open the possibility that I have missed psychological and symbolical connections too deep for my imagination.

401. Poem: Among lovers how many Chekhovs

Among lovers how many Chekhovs how many finding the contact of genitals a comedown finding all the joy in the narrowing distance the joy freaky yes but are these people more freaky than Platonist freaks who had a big following they those loving wretches who swore 'tis not the bodies marry but the minds or are there hundreds thousands of Chekhovians what am I talking about we'll never know because unlike the Platonists who tell how close they lay the whole night long and never touched Chekhovians never tell us anything at all is it embarrassment at their freakiness is it patrician reserve is it lack of pride or is it abundance of power power they might lose if they blab or display I guess power but not a single power as in the hormone I guess all the powers as in the powers of mind and memory and knowledge knowledge of the woman memory sensing in the kiss the long girlhood of the albums lost in the move to single male power and the burst into that whole shooting match.