Prerequisites for a Trendy Poetry Reading

Joseph S. Salemi

Casual clothes, streetwise but debonair:
Knit sweater, denims (slightly dishabille);
A tentative, apologetic air,
As if you told what you would most conceal;

Credentials of the avant garde, implied
In the unstudied flexion of your spine;
A contrapposto at the lectern’s side
To match the supine slackness of your line;

Serious subjects, or some apt remark
That shows you au courant with modern times;
Personal torment, but conjoined with stark
Social awareness of our bourgeois crimes;

Above all else, an audience of sods
That hears its platitudes confirmed, and nods.