[Kate Benedict]

[Deep apologies to Yeats and good hags everywhere]

Willy Vanilli Villanelle
(or The Sex Appeal’s Desertion)


I must lie down where all the ladders start,
and sleep under the rungs with wiggly rats
in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

The smell down here is sulphurous and tart:
the old slut keeps a multitude of cats.
I must lie down where all the ladders start.

I may no longer climb them and depart.
I pitch my woo upon these fetid mats
in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

What maid would find me fair, a worn old fart,
a fop, beddraggled in his tattered spats.
I must lie down where all the ladders start,

choose hags for friends and all that hags impart--
their vexing cackles and their hexing vats--
in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

I’m done with poetry, I’m done with art.
Redheads spurn me, I attract old bats.
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.