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.
Photo by Lis Ferla
