If I could sing, I wouldn’t write this shit
for intellectuals who read too much:
I’d be a diva, you can bet on it,
adored by teenybopper fans with zits,
adorning magazines from Elle to Us.
If I could sing, I wouldn’t write this shit.
Oh, Justin Timberlake would bare my tit
on MTV in an attack of lust.
I'd be a diva, you can bet on it.
I might OD, but I would never slit
my wrists or turn the gas up, more robust
than pallid poets churning out this shit.
The moving finger writes and, having writ,
shoots bards a middle digit pointing up
while divas count the moola from their hits.
Ask Whitney, Britney, jitneys full of Brits
from sixties pop invasions—writing sucks!
Ask Janis Joplin's ghost or Stevie Nicks.
They’d all stay divas, you can bet on it.
Julie Kane is the author of the poetry collection Rhythm & Booze (University of Illinois Press, 2003), which was a National Poetry Series winner and a finalist for the 2005 Poets’ Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Light Quarterly, and The Formalist, while her essays on poetry and literature can be found in many academic publications. She is an associate professor of English at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Julie Kane is the author of the poetry collection Rhythm & Booze (University of Illinois Press, 2003), which was a National Poetry Series winner and a finalist for the 2005 Poets’ Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Light Quarterly, and The Formalist, while her essays on poetry and literature can be found in many academic publications. She is an associate professor of English at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.