Yo- heifers, sows, irritants, recite this poem
and get a boyfriend
Poets, minor or
major should arrange to remain slender,
Cling to their
skeletons, not batten
On provender,
not fatten the lean spirit
In its isolated
cell, its solitary chains.
The taut paunch
ballooning in its network of veins
Explodes from
the cummerbund. The hardening artery of neck
Cannot be
masked by turtle-throated cashmere or foulard of mottled silk.
Poets, poets
use rags instead; use rags and consider
That Poe did
not lie in the morgue swathed
Beyond
recognition in fat. Consider on this late March
Afternoon, with
violet and crocus outside, fragile as glass,
That the music
of Marianne Moore’s small, polished bones
Was not
muffled, the score not lost between thighs as thick as bass-fiddles
Or cat-gut
muted by dropsy. Baudelaire did not throttle on corpulence,
Rimbaud not
strangle on his own grease. In the unleafed trees, as I write,
Birds flicker,
lighter than lace. They are the lean spirit,
Beaks asking
for crumbs, their voices like reeds.
William Carlos
Williams sat close, close to the table always, always,
Close to the
typewriter keys, his body not held at bay by a drawbridge of
flesh
Under his
doctor’s dress, no gangway to lower, letting the sauces,
The starches,
the strong liquor, enter and exit
With bugles
blowing. Over and over he was struck thin
By the mallet
of beauty, the switchblade of sorrow, died slim as a gondola,
Died curved
like the fine neck of a swan.
These were not
gagged, strangled, outdone by the presence
Of banquet
selves. They knew words make their way through navel and pore,
Move weightless
as thistle, as dandelion drift, unencumbered.
Death happens
to fatten on poets’ glutted hearts. (“Dylan!”
Death calls,
and the poet scrambles drunk and alone to what were once
swift,
bony feet,
Casting a
monstrous shadow of gargantuan flesh before he crashes.)
Poets, remember
your skeletons. In youth or dotage, remain as light as ashes.
Poets
Kaye Boyle
(foxy lady)