I can sell you this poet for $500.
A whole poet -
it’s a screaming deal.
This roommate of mine was a poet,
but nobody’d ever read
any of his shit.
He talked and talked about writing,
and he was a very good critic.
He even convinced me to stop writing
and leave the world alone
for about six months.
This poet, he wrote every day,
on yellow sheets of paper,
and put them in a cigar box under his bed.
I know, because I saw him.
I tried to look over his shoulder
once
while he was scratching
and he screamed,
like someone had stabbed him in
his pudgy side.
If you haven’t been stuck before
you can’t know
what that cry of pain
sounds like inside your own head.
So I didn’t try to read
his work again,
for fear of hurting him.
Though on nights or hot
afternoons
when he wasn’t in the apartment
the cigar box whispered
to me
like a cool seductress.
One day, this poet dies.
Dropped dead on a bus
for no reason,
as far as I could tell.
I ran home then
and erased his browser history
and took all the porn
and rubbery sex toys
out of his closet
before his family
could come to claim
his things.
He hadn’t ASKED me to,
but I figured he wouldn’t want
his mother
sifting through butt-plugs.
And as I was clearing out
all of the refuse of
a silicone sex life,
the box whispered to me again.
I went under his bed
and there it was:
the Cigar Box.
Then I realize that there are seventeen
cigar boxes
stuffed to the gills -
except the newest one, which is only
mostly empty.
“He might have written
about butt-plugs,
or hating his mother,
or planning to commit suicide
by standing up too quickly
on a bus,” I worried,
deeply concerned for his legacy.
For how he would have felt
about how his mother might feel
reading his shit.
Or anyone reading his shit.
I took the boxes,
and I put them under my bed.
I never opened them.
I’ve got a whole poet under my bed.
But now I’m moving to
New York City -
the Big Apple -
and I can’t take all of these
cigar boxes with me.
So does anyone want a poet?
I’m selling a whole poet
for $400. No one’s ever read
any of this shit.
You can keep it, just for yourself,
your own poet.
Isn’t that fun?
Or you can show it to your friends,
tell them the story of the unpublished
piece of shit
who fell dead
on a bus
in Mesa.
$300 and you can own
a whole poet.
You can pretend the shit is yours,
get published
and famous.
No one will ever know,
he’s decomposing
and no one else ever saw a word
of this shit.
$200.
Come on.
No one?
No one wants a poet? A life’s work?
Ok. It’s going in the garbage.
I have just thrown away a poet.
