FAME RABIES

You are in a sulk, the kinky-bitter

Of frisée smothered by acute

Rosemary, irrevocable sage.

You revile herbs, ambition, fawnery.

Why were you a recluse

Hiding hither, there

In the straw-filled cages

Of the puppy mills,

Waiting there for what.

In the story, your life was young,

Would last. In the east you made

No memories. In the west you never were.

In the middle of the country, once

In a large, aspiring, opaqued crowd,

You could barely wait to be visible.

In two thousand years, malaise

And foaming, hydrophobia—

The diagnosis is not possible

Before the Posthumous. Don’t pout.

               What animal, do you think,

Would velvet be the pelt of?