He claims I jab like a schoolgirl.
"See Boccaccio," he tells me. "See Jeffers,
Fante, Céline . . . and get a job, kid."
Anaïs Nin telegrams from Paris.
She's had it with Henry and his whores.
"He's just a child," she writes, "and so are you."
It is a delicate affair with her.
I've been shooting William Burroughs into the vein
like a shameless junky.
His hipster cynicism floods the bloodstream
with antipathy for Freud's theories on
psychosexual development, The Ego And The Id,
The Interpretation Of Dreams.
I have recorded my dreams in which
Hemingway is a frequent visitor.
He insists I keep my elbows down and in
else that scoundrel, Dostoyevsky,
will sucker-punch me in the groin.
I have looked forward to meeting Nietzsche
and Rimbaud, but semester is beginning
and I am required to spend much time
with Wordsworth, Melville and Descartes,
the very same sons of bitches
Mark Twain cautioned not to let interfere
with my education.
**First published in Di-Verse-City anthology
I have recorded my dreams in which
Hemingway is a frequent visitor.
He insists I keep my elbows down and in
else that scoundrel, Dostoyevsky,
will sucker-punch me in the groin.
I have looked forward to meeting Nietzsche
and Rimbaud, but semester is beginning
and I am required to spend much time
with Wordsworth, Melville and Descartes,
the very same sons of bitches
Mark Twain cautioned not to let interfere
with my education.
**First published in Di-Verse-City anthology
