Some stains aren’t moral,
Metaphorical.
Some stains are just plaque.
Some poems aren’t about
What poems are about.
Some are working verse.
1833,
Solyman Brown poured
Out rhyming couplets,
In imitation
Of the previous
Century’s fashion,
For eighty pages—
Dentologia,
A brick of cantos—
Poet laureate
Of dentistry—but
The weird poetry
Isn’t in the forced
Orthodontic verse
But in the footnotes
By another man,
And even then not
In the notes per se,
But in how each note
Behaves as a gloss
For the obvious
Meaning of the verse.
One verse tells parents
To leave milk teeth be,
Let unobstructed
Nature do the rest,
Whereupon the note
Informs us that those
Who live in small towns
Have a lower rate
Of mortality
From dentition,
Happy Villages!
All poems should get this
Scholarly treatment
A la The Waste Land,
But at the pleasure
Of each footnoter,
Whatever the lines
Suggest to a mind,
Let the readers write
Their peculiar notes,
Lyric fan fiction
If you like, so that
Any poem might have
Contesting versions
Of explanations
That win by virtue
Of bizarre surprise.
Forget the teachers.
Let the readers play.
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