After Dartmouth reading

“After Dartmouth reading
& question period, a student
(blond in tank top) comes up:
Who are you? Are you American?
What sort of English are you
Speaking?”—James Merrill,
“A Poets Notebook,” Prose

I take him back home—
To Sandover & flagellate him
Nude on the veranda, wondering
How Toulouse-Lautrec would have
Painted the lovely seminal scene.

Bruce remained vernal—
Long after Dartmouth, graceful
Enticing, flagrantly in bud,
Unlike his generation, bent and
Gnarled, scandalous lifeless lives.

A postcard from Pompidou Center—
His veins multicolored, his smile,
“You should hear the Hunchback
Play at the organ console, James.
It reminds me of you, my dear.

Watching him smoke a Camel—
On the beach by the sunset sea,
A log splits into blazing discs
On its bed of ashes & coals,
The board spells V-O-I-L-A!

Nearby a little crab—
Incandescent, Kabuki-faced
Pulses its claws open & shut
Demoiselle of the Dance,
Saurian lust, alligator love!