After the Master of Fine Arts
Calls your pen name to the spoken word stage
Ask everyone how it’s hanging
Even the eunuchs
Say you want to tell Walt Whitman
It gets better
Wait for a pause
Gregorian chant like a Benedictine punk
The worst line of the best poem
You’ve never written
Make nothing
Rhyme with orange
Share your truth
Without gazing too long
At your navel
Halfway through a moment of silence
Shout into the mega microphone
At the flop of your tongue—
Poetry takes ears to perfect
And guts to perform
