Odelisque

Put the genre on display.
Lie it sideways. Show the form.
Undress it—it’s exotic—

Bare gift still in the wrapper
Of that alien empire,
The prosody of the past.

The content in that outline,
Model of the poem next door,
Hardly matters anymore—

Or rather, only matters
To show that what readers like
These days can be sumptuous,

Can cosplay with otherness,
Mastered and shared among us.