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 fiancé,
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 fiancé 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
