Kim Addonozio and me, with "What Do Women Want?"

for this poem, sure, I’ll support you.

but I won't promote you as "Bukowski in a Sundress."

I want you as you were when you wrote about that little red dress.

that's my take.

sure, your book’s expensive, at least as books written by poets go.

excuse my flashback into your poem, but look, this is your fault.

I've been considering you wearing that red dress, the dress

your younger self panted for, shimmying into it, slinking around 

the streets of San Francisco like you shit ice cream,–– and sure,

you did, and you drove me crazy, but it’s all in the crooked way

I look at things, and if I’m living, and if you’re dead and buried,

(unlikely, because I'm 12 times your age) and you've turned to ash

draped within that damn red dress, which by the way, was what

you said you wanted, you'll still be haunting me, fantasizing over

how you were, the sound of your words, the length of your throat

rising deliberately from the neckline.

you were younger, then.

I wasn't. this is your fault !

your walkabout through San Francisco was like a visual horror hunt.

along your way we pity the pigs slapped on the loading dock's dolly

as naked in death as they were in life, and along your way we pity

the harried Wong's who laid-out trays of day-old donuts, but

honest to their core, promoted them as such.

why'd you make me pity the Wong's now that I know them.

this is your fault !

you and that goddamned red freakin' dress !

you make me nervous, even now that I'm old with a bad ticker.

look. there are three things I know about the universe:

one: the Sun will explode in five billion years.

two: you’re the one who wrote the poem about the little red dress.

and three: I'm the guy who paid money to read about it.