Poet and Audience by Erik Campbell

Erik Campbell

Poet and Audience by Erik Campbell

T.

Obama confirms: Osama is dead.

…

Back to the rest of my life, this made me smile:

Poet and Audience

Erik Campbell

I

The Argument:

You Wondered Why You Weren’t Published

It’s because the postman has opened

All your submissions and kept them

Tucked your words, as it were, under

His proverbial, federal wing.

And just so you know,

Your love poems

work

.

He reads them to his wife in bed

Before what has recently become

Most lyrical sex; he even adds

A few verbs here and there

For the sake of flow.

II

The Consolation

But you’ll be pleased to know

He generally leaves your

Enjambment alone

And understands the way irony

Goes; a fulcrum for your failure

And his formally elegiac evenings

Which he now has the diction

And courage to call

epiphanic

.

His only regret

Is that you aren’t

More prolific.

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