John Biscello

Anne Sexton: tall and lovely and dead,

and I, turning the knob, want to get in

and fuck her, but cannot,

because she is dead.

So really, I wanted to, past tense.

                                                            The point being:

how I wanted to fuck her, how—

Now, telling you about the biography I just read

on Anne Sexton: a poet, tall and lovely, who chain-smoked

and is now dead          (by her own hand,

                                         proving we claim stars when we can)

and why can’t I stop thinking about

how I am alive, how,

and she, the poet, Anne Sexton is dead,

and if we traded places—

a gravesite for a clean silver spade:

would she be the one

reading a biography about me,

and mooning for a twilight lay

with a dead writer?

These are the sort of questions

which keep me up at night,

and keep me reading biographies

about writers

dead                and open to whatever.