to Aloysius Monk / literary critic at the Holmes Gazette

look at this way.

you’ve been chosen to be sacrificed on the altar of pure poetry.

this is how I feel you, breathing over my right shoulder

even though you know I'm left-handed.

the problem here is you want a pretty poem;

something like you'd find in the "special occasions"

rack at the pharmacy. I'm not here to wish you well. 

you knew I wrote fractured poems, dumpster poems,

poems most suited for the large intestine.

you wanted a valentine heart. a make-believe heart.

you wanted a two-dimensional heart cut-out to fit

your easy-listening modus operandi. 

the poem’s heart is a slimy muscle beating blood beneath

the chest cavity feeding the veins and arteries of the body

as unapologetically naked as biology should be. 

that’s my kind of poem, my kind of heart; a bloody,

sticky, gooey mess of an apparatus that leaves you

wanting to wash your hands after reading.

but that's me. you know,––  incurably romantic.