My beloved husband says, no poems

about poems, declaring them as useful

as rhubarb, which was a plot device

in a horrendous made-for-TV movie we watched

 

instead of writing poems about poetry, which,

I argue, can be fruitful and necessary,

unlike this movie which would have viewers believe

the sweater-wearing professor next door

 

is actually a sick psychopath with a hidden

bunker of kidnapped women beneath

his suburban ranch-style house. This plot,

I assert, is far less plausible than your

 

average ars poetica–which, at least,

might possess subtle word play and glistening

imagery. In this movie, which we watch

aghast at its Mack-truck-sized plot holes,

 

our friendly neighborhood psycho professor

chloroforms his hunky neighbor’s fiancĂ©,

forces her to swap her Portlandia threads

for the crinolines and lipstick of a 1950s

 

sitcom housewife. They carve a lot

of roasts in his hidden bunker,

which is protected by a security system

no untenured essay-grader could afford.

 

Anyone can afford an ars poetica though,

I maintain–a few lines, a turn of phrase

or two, some shuddery slither of insight

for an ending. By the time this movie

 

is done, there are multiple dead bodies,

the rhubarb has become pie, the prof’s

languishing in prison, and the hunky

dude’s fiancĂ© has penned a tell-all

 

about her ordeal. It will be seen by more people

than will ever read this poem. But I declare

this poem has reason to exist, if only

to warn you of the time-suck of Lifetime movies.

 

I should be happy the psycho prof

wasn’t also a poet, pleased he wasn’t

quoting Randall Jarrell or lamenting the decline

of New Criticism. Small mercies do exist,

 

as do poems, as do poems about poems,

and I don’t need a stint in some knife-wielding

anti-Modernist’s basement to ward off all

the darkness above, all the pastel chaos.


Photo by Kat Sniffen