Poet Milking Sacred Cow

Victual Reality, Or How American Poets Are Turning

The Poem Into Tripe

Merle’s

hag-

gard

old

sagging

cow

belly’s

gone

to

pot.

The photograph late April 1975, half-way through a coast-to-coast motoring trip from Seattle to Boston; the poem twenty-some years later—maybe our titillating poet should have thought twice before regurgitating it.