There he is on the podium, the famous poet
who pulled on my toes the night I stayed in his house
over twenty-five years ago—a young MFA-er
invited to crash on the couch by his beautiful wife.
Surely, he’s joking, I told myself back then:
the man is old; he’s already got a girl
for a second wife! Next time it was his hand
tapping my thigh as he read out my villanelle.
“I’m here for poetry,” I protested. He laughed.
“So am I, darlin’! You’ve got to loosen these rhymes!”
This went on . . . I complained to his buddy
who ran the department. He paid me no mind,
complimenting my “talents,” promising
to have a little talk with the old goat,
a nudge and a hand slap over bourbon and rocks.
By then, I had dropped out, feeling ashamed
as women often do when Eden, marriages,
or dreams don’t work—a sin to have refused
to be muse fodder for a great man’s work,
using the lame excuse: I’m here for art.
But then, a glorious revenge ensued:
he disappeared in anonymity!
Over the years, I never heard his name
in writerly discussions, never found his books
whenever I searched the shelves, relieved each time
he wasn’t there: another hammer blow
on the coffin lid of a ghost.—Now, here he is!
(no justice in the life or in the work?)
a grizzled éminence, pronouncing stuff
some girls in the front row are writing down.