Billy Collins said that we should not
beat a poem with a hose.
My colleague says that Billy Collins
never checked his privilege.
She tells me that we should take a poem
to a public place.
Staple it to a waterboard
and listen to it gasp for air.
Or drop a starving rat
into the body of a poem
and watch it eat its way out.
I ask her to keep the light on outside
and to invite a poem in for dinner
or to meditate with a poem on the top of a hill.
She asks me if I want to be an ally
or if I want to march with tiki torches.
Tomorrow, I’ll let her hang my poems
from the strappado of Twitter
so that we can find out what they really mean.