A poem a day in April from Rutgers English PhD students and friends.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

IIIIII

My best friend is locked inside a Wisconsin prison

I am not supposed to talk to strangers about it

He is a good person and undeserving of confinement

Not the way a character is good but the way a person is

If you are my friend then you have unknowingly thanked him many times

He taught me how to hold my puke

I wrote a book about it you can buy it online

Or I could send you the file

I’m reading this other book I really want to tell you about

Except the author is pretty clear about don’t talk about it

But I could make you a mix of all the songs that mention this book

And you could get it and do close listening

And put lyrical bits into search engines

And maybe sleuth it out yourself

So we could have a real talk about this book

Where we haven’t broken any author rules

Before we jointly decide whether to break some or not

2 comments:

  1. "close listening"-- fantastic!

    ReplyDelete
  2. the impulse to keep is commensurate with the impulse to give away

    ReplyDelete