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Monday, October 4, 2021

Bernadette Mayer





only the manners of centuries ago can teach me 
how to address you my lover as who you are 
O Sestius, how could you put up with my children 
thinking all the while you were bearing me as in your mirror 
it doesn't matter anymore if spring wreaks its fiery 
or lamblike dawn on my new-found asceticism, some joke 
I wouldn't sleep with you or any man if you paid me 
and most of you poets don't have the cash anyway 
so please rejoin your fraternal books forever 
while you miss in your securest sleep Ms. Rosy-fingered dawn 

who might've been induced to digitalize a part of you 
were it not for your self-induced revenge of undoneness 
it's good to live without a refrigerator! why bother 
to chill the handiwork of Ceres and of Demeter? 
and of the lonesome Sappho. let's have it warm for now.

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