Art history matters. New Master’s degrees
Lead to dull innovation in poetry. Please
Try to write us a poem where meaning is plain
And no MFA patriarch needs to explain.

a statue carved by Bernini/a plate of eggs painted by Velázquez  

Jane, dear Jane, you’re a porcelain idol.
The time has arrived for your verse to unbridle
Itself and reveal some slight traces of life;
We know you are smart, but that dull butter-knife
Of your poetry, smearing the references ’round
Is like Sylvia Plath/Gertrude Stein/Ezra Pound…

personal pan pizza with unlimited free toppings

Those weird sudden line breaks confuse us, in fact,
And the rarefied dishes you name-drop get cracked
On the floor of your poetry, leaving us shards,
Risking splinters for muses and mystified bards.

my arm breaks off  like the shell/of a freshly-filled cannoli

You deadpan in monotone, stunningly brave,
But your tortuous verses go straight to the grave.
Academic obscurantists murmur and nod
As they lower the corpse of your work in the sod…

carelessly thrown baby/a designer toilet cistern

You ought to re-frame and then tighten your lines,
So replete with Old Masters and euro-trash wines:

(…weirdly-named liqueurs in a Rococo  palais)

Why would you not, then, aspire to coherence,
Dismissing the need for white male interference?
Your verses cry out for some fatherly guidance
To try and make sense of your history of silence.