The Canon Electric: A Sestina

I tell Corrie daily that Id like to be her, to read Eliot For the first time in college town where Dickinson Cloistered herself hermetically from the likes of Frost Just a few miles up I-91 in Vermont. Fitzgerald Said it best, that our spent dreams for the republic behind us while Whitman Hits the open road in Birkenstocks and the bluster of Hemingway. Say what you will about machismo, Hemingway Had it all wrong; he was as spineless as Eliot Who could not roll up his pants to frolic like Whitman On the shore, or let peach juice lace his chin as Dickinson Dreamt at her window of Zelda and Fitzgerald, Their soirees far too chic for a rustic like Frost. Despite his images of harvests and scythes, Frost Was a terrible framer, a big guy like Hemingway Could certainly have helped around the house while Fitzgerald Would have counseled the brooding Eliot, “Just go into that room, Tom, and tell them you knew Michelangelo.” Dickinson, of course, would have gotten on famously with Whitman, an agoraphobic and a drifter, what could be better, Mr. Whitman? You’d stop by woods on a snowy evening somewhere near the Frost Residence, and shed never miss the leafy enclaves of Amherst, Dickinson With her stifling rhymes, Walt, you’d spend a night under palms at the Hemingway House in Key West, and shed bust out of that collar and write licentiously to Eliot, Would fumble his peaches and coffee spoons in the frenzy. Why, only a night with Fitzgerald Splashing in the Plaza fountain could fill her newfound capacity for wonder, Mrs. Fitzgerald Sending droplets like coins through the night skies of Gotham, Whitman, I need you now, as I face my fifth decade here, as I am haunted by Eliot Yearned for mermaids, yet afraid to roll his trousers and wade into the tide while Frost, As a young man, mourned his wife and most of his children. If only Hemingway Had found you, Walt, in Ketchum, Idaho, that morning, or perhaps Miss Dickinson At the breakfast table with something incredibly decadent and rhymes that only Dickinson Could write, the way she could not stop for death, and perhaps Fitzgerald Could have said something about those sparse, sterile sentences for which Hemingway Had such a penchant, and Ernest would become furious, angry enough to call Whitman, And say, “Walt, I’ve just had it with these repressed women and New York pretty boys, so call Frost And lets just the next flight to the Keys and go for the big boys, marlin, swordfish…” Eliot, Of course, would contemplate his trousers on the shore, as Hemingway would load gear and Whitman Would revel in the body electric, Dickinson, his old flame, back in Idaho with Fitzgerald While frost would don a straw hat, apply sunscreen, and wave, as the Pilar leaves the dock, to Eliot.