After Coleridge

by Duncan McNaughton

Collingwood had nothing better to do
than listen to this guy who was talking
in a type of Chinese, saying, I love
to think about Pasolini’s glow worm
take but I’ve never read his article.
Me neither, Collingwood said. What I got
of it was from Sciascia, I BAFFI
SALVATI. Me too, said the Chinese weirdo.
Who knows where they find these characters but,
like Ahab, you look behind you and they’re
steering the fucking boat. Then what? Poetry,
that’s what. Then the front buzzer buzzes, Fed
Ex from Medellin, Sophie Calle, right at
the same time the whores in Cartagena
are giving Obama’s protection a
lesson in how not to stiff working girls.
It’s not all Keats and Yeats and Emily
Dickinson, folks, not these days in Salò,
but don’t thank me. Listen. I don’t belong
here any more than Johnny Griffin did.