I fell in love with a poem today,
A Romantic poem of highest beauty,
A poem by the wife of a wealthy attorney.
I read it by the light of my phone in bed
In the morning dark. It kicked me in the head.
There are beautiful wives of wealthy attorneys,
Wearing the beauty of their attorneys’ money.
Money turns into women’s beauty,
Beauty loved, immediately, in the eye;
We love the attorneys’ beautiful wives—
Who will love their attorney for the rest of their lives
As long as he respects them, and gives them money.
Money is the poet to female beauty;
The beautiful wife is the attorney’s poem,
Written leisurely in the powder room,
And I am expected, almost as a duty,
To want the attorney’s faithful wife’s beauty.
But when his wife writes a poem of beauty,
I fall in love with a different beauty.
This is different. You may not tell
The attorney. How does his wife write so well?
There is a technique to poems today—
Romantic poetry is far away.
The women is not supposed to write
Romantic poems in the middle of the night.
There is a hierarchy, and inside it we fade,
If the face is ugly, or this prose thing doesn’t make the grade,
Or if we don’t see things, or we don’t have money.
Her poem of beauty has made me weak.
I want no more of the modern technique.
I love her. I am disrupted. I am on my knees
Before her poem. Don’t tell the attorney, please.
Be beautiful, in the attorney’s fantasy.
Don’t send any more of those poems to me.
Wear his dress. Or blow a kiss.
But you are not allowed to be beautiful like this.