The Sentence and Everything That Leaves It

Rhyme scared a writer who worried some

About self-aggrandizing postures,

And the vintage Grandmaster Flash boast,

I got rhymes galore! popped up in thought.

Every pose is for an audience,

And a daydream of an audience

Generates its own poses, such as

A literary explanation

Excusing the indelicate rhyme

By learnedly invoking Baldwin

And Lorde. That’s a mind imagining

An audience nodding solemnly

With a certain kind of piety

The writer swore in writing to avoid.