Another Fine Mess You’ve Gotten Us Into
(Go Ahead, Fiddle With Your Tie!)

In prison Emily was raped by dykes,
by guards, by the warden’s wife.
When Emily wasn’t in solitary confinement,

she was allowed an hour in the sun.
The sun’s penis calmed her
and she despised women.

The clouds were poems
floating on a New England river,
trout jumped from vowels,

but just when the skin of the stones
was stretched to the breaking point,
the guard would tell her,

“It’s time, Emily.”
Back into her cell she went,
rolled up like the ball at the end of this line. O