Couplets For the Connoisseurs – Tom Will

March 19, 2025

They have hidden the lonely poem in the anthology to titillate.
They will surround anything with print and eat the plate.

And how!
They allow

Anthologies of women,
Anthologies of men,

And with those co-editorials,
From the very same press that mailed us “The Life Cycle Memorials.”

And see how I hold this anthology,
Like any connoisseur of pornography,

You start from the back; and then in and then in and then in,
To try and find your way back home to some familiar sin.

O water slide,
Be deep not wide.

O tide pool tide,
Let my nose and chlorine collide.

There is the fear in writing a poem of never being there again;
So too, we fear the final page that we might understand.