What good would it do me to win a grant
or a literary prize, a writer-in-residence position.
Then I wouldn’t be able to say nobody helped me.
I have my price but that isn’t it. Farts, bad breath.
People asking the wrong question. I have everything
I need. A web site on the worldwide web and
a writing room. Enough money from
social security to print up pamphlets
and give them away. One poet used to print
little magazines in editions of 25 copies and eat
out of a Dempster Dumpster. Judson Crews.
Is that correct? Lars Eighner, Travels with Lizbeth,
was a Dumpster-diver. Threepenny Review
compared him to Jack London.
People of the Abyss.
The Iron Heel.
Or maybe it was George Orwell.
Down and Out in
I am not the chef, I am the dishwash-ère,
the plongeur, I plunge the plunger home.
Here, Julius—hold this.
Nixon gave his enemies a sword, I give
the Mall Builder culture an enema, enema vérité.
What you see on the end of the fork when you really look.