In the corner of the afterlife where poets gather,
Emily Dickinson has started a petition
to have me thrown under a carriage: in due time
poor Keats will be forced to point out
that carriages are hard to come by on this side;
Eliot is amused but entirely unimpressed
at the little references I make to him
and everyone else—the format itself is foreign, uncouth—
and of course, poor Poe is left to wonder
what great crimes the stars conducted in what far away wars
to be commemorated in at least a quarter of my work,
and no one, especially the ladies, knows where Billy went.

By Heidi Turner