Flipping Off the Muse

For the Baggetts

If I could I would write poems like those

I just stumbled on, three poems by two sisters.

I’m a sucker for their tough-cookie strut,

their tongue in cheekiness in all its gloriously gross

and feisty animus, their clever verb flog-fests,

their striptease syntax, their enjambments

jolting even the least reactionary reader to

attention. That’s what they get from me,

my metaphoric poet’s hair sumptuously static

when they call their muse Marquis de Sade,

floozy, she-hag, harlot, hot flash, bitch.

I’m a sucker for such sassy conniption fits,

and after I’ve finished their trio of poems

I collapse backward on my sofa spent,

whatever writer’s block against idolatry I’ve left

breached by their hot and sloppy muse,

the muse they accuse in stanza two

of making a mess of it, the muse they thrash

for being such a shrew, then as she exits

near the end of stanza three tell her

to get a life, or at least a therapist,

and as she shakes her booty heading for

the door, implore her to keep coming back.