Middle-aged divorced writer ladies
don’t love Bukowski.
We don’t love your cats.
Our souls don’t mate.
We assume you love to laugh.
We only laugh when it’s funny,
and it’s not that easy to be funny.
It’s an art.
Middle-aged divorced writer ladies
don’t love Bukowski.
When we hear of your love of Bukowski,
and you only mention Bukowski –
right after you hear of our love of
Hybrid Poetics, but only because you asked –
we think, “Likely he doesn’t have a very big
literary palate,
though at least he knows better than to say
Stephen King.”
Middle-aged divorced writer ladies
really don’t love Bukowski.
What we love is hounds.
hounds and specific kinds of pens
and notebooks with paper
of a certain weight and texture.
we love watching seedlings unfold,
crushing fresh cardamom pods.
we love dusty bookstores
and really, all bookstores
and vinyl and spotify and apple music
and whatever way we can hear music and
read books that expand far beyond
(and don’t include) Bukowski.
When I say “we,” what I mean is “I.”
I really don’t love Bukowski, and
it doesn’t matter to me
if you don’t know the names
of all the people who write great books –
I don’t either, just because I’m a writer lady.
When we say, “middle-aged divorced writer ladies
don’t love Bukowski,”
what we mean is we don’t love dating
middle-aged guys who have cats and
say they love Bukowski because
they feel they have to say something cool
instead of just saying something about writers
because they have something to say
about writers.
Given some adjustments in tailoring,
middle-aged divorced writer ladies
are comfortable in both little black dresses
and the right pair of jeans,
but mostly our clothing does not intentionally conform
to the requirements of those middle-aged men
who love Bukowski and have cats.
Middle-aged divorced writer ladies
have probably never even liked Bukowski.
And like everyone else, we love to travel –
there’s no need to request it of us especially.
What do you think we’re going to say? –
“Oh, no, we don’t want to see the world.”
We leave the gold-digging to Jack London.
We don’t think grilling is a substitute for cooking,
or that proving is a substitute for being,
or that ‘real’ is synonymous with ‘authentic,’
‘authentic’ synonymous with ‘honest,’
‘honest’ synonymous with ‘safe,’
or “safe” synonymous with ‘appealing.’
Still you ask, have we even read Bukowski?
and we have.
We haven’t basked or luxuriated in his words,
but we are able to assess Bukowski
as a sort of rapey Leonard Cohen
who doesn’t sing.
Yes, we know. That’s a bit reductive,
but what do you expect
from the people you lump together
with all other middle-aged divorced writer ladies?
What do you expect?