All My Pretty Ones

All My Pretty Ones
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All My Pretty Ones
Unreading Myself
Male Confessional Poetry
John Berryman
Yeats’ kitchen
Death Baby
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All My Pretty Ones

Miss Lowell wasn’t ready—
We outdid even her whining
Away way back then

Sylvia & I sitting in class—
Watching him do his schmaltzy
Skunk Hour Drag Routine
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Nantucket Burlesque—
“Gimme a break” Sylvia says
“Male confessional poetry yawn”

“He’s possessed” I say—
“Just another pretty one” she says
We skipped class for cocktails

Unreading Herself

Sylvia used to take pride—
In being a poet but now
Male flowers depress her

Down the steep slopes—
Of Parnassus male
Stink oozes, smells
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Corpses of male poets—
Rotting in Mausoleums
Don’t last very long

Poets embalmed—
In male academe, worms
Sweet-toothing away

Male Confessional Poetry

What Lowell & Berryman
Worked thru, you know
All those Male moods
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Or did the moods work—
Thru them instead drawing
Out some Male curse of theirs?
_______________

Letting male plot swallow—
Up their dialog like some
Old lurking Male River Styx?

John Berryman

You had your Henry—
Or did Henry have you?
There’s no privacy
Being a poet
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Spilling your beans—
Flinging your Linguini
Drinking in the bars
Hangovers & Sonnets

Yeats’ kitchen
—for Ted Hughes

There in Yeats’ London kitchen—
Things keep changing all the time
Suicides & murders come & go

Did Hughes murder her?—
The keyboard keys leering back
Each key a glaring eyeball
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Ted Hughes descending—
Slowly like Norma Desmond
Down the Staircase

His eye sockets full of—
Sunset Boulevard old whore
Phone numbers haunting him

Tulips

Tulips taking root in her—
New England pussy forcing
The world back at him

Thank goodness the clock—
No longer strikes the hour
Like nails into her wrists
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The landlord has a nice—
Blue plaque outside to
Celebrate Yeats once here

But all Sylvia has is a—
Beat-up oven they moved
To the Flat downstairs

Death Baby

She’s a death baby now—
Her eyes turned upward
Two burnt-out light bulbs

Her lips stiffened into—
A pale pout not a
Queen bee any longer
_______________

She dreams nightly—
He baby dreams blue as
A blueberry Popsicle

Bacon & eggs stink—
The rhythm of marriage
Has gone bye-bye
_______________

Coffee hisses like snakes—
Her tits erect like pimentos
Caviar still in jars

Crabs instead of lobsters—
Assia gave them to Ted
He gave them to Sylvia
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The smell of sawdust—
He’s quartering her on the Floor
Slicing her tell-tale tongue

He threw her to the worms—
How they feasted on her
Until she was all gone