You often
wonder if you are
really and truly a poet,
equivalent to a Serious Woman
in a Windsor chair,
quoting proficiently,
maybe even from other languages,
who owns a dour suit
for special occasions, someone
who does not wear
shoulder length earrings,
whose words and hair
are In Control. Maybe
if you were a real poet
you’d take lexapro or drink
something less frivolous
than Negronis. You
would know the Latin names
of things, not just
Prunus is Almond,
last memory
of high school Latin
where you were more interested
in your teacher’s mysterious
love life, than words.
If you were a real poet
you might not like
frivolous tv, such as
the show in Little America
where the Caribbean immigrant
meets a young Hasidic woman
with four children who runs
a bra store in Brooklyn
and the two of them become
friends and the Caribbean woman
becomes a bra expert. If
you were a real poet maybe you
wouldn’t go to the flea market
every single Sunday. Instead
you’d sit very still on the brown coach
rereading Coleridge and saying out loud
Now There’s a Poet.
A poet is someone who embraces Esther Cohen's doubt about poets...
ahh sister poet friend/ Coleridge was so stoned he forgot the Rime he dreamed/ maybe absinthe instead of your negronis/
and some wore dull Victorian colors only because/ brilliant dyes from plants cultivated by enslavement/ were refused or measured like sugar/backbreaking sweets./we are poets because/ somedays while eyes and hands seek market surprises/ in brilliant colors/ while we chat with market women/ we hear a rhythm/ and honor it/ our heads nodding/ earrings grazing our shoulders