You're Welcome

American Poetry Review, The, May/Jun 2005 by Beskin, Lisa

Yep. Romanticism's usually OK,

though it shows up at parties too early,

hogs the canapés and exhausts the hostess,

who retreats to her boudoir. Out

in the living room, it puts the moves

on the engineer's daughter; she's 19, but still,

and anyway, her eye is fastened on the orthodontist's wife,

Eileen. Eileen herself would like to find

the hostess and be forced into a corset.

The corset finds romanticism fat and stinky.

The corset wants a Doric column.

It wants the new film by John Donne,

where actresses wear masques

and rave about marble, not clouds.

The hostess has another whiskey sour

and rages at her flaccid husband;

Eileen's giggling under the bed,

preening in her stays.

Guests finish up their nominal tipples.

Embarrassing, really, how the engineer

leers at the orthodontist, who blushes

and stares into the dregs of his gimlet.

The lipstick-smeared hostess emerges

to find romanticism conked out on the couch,

a sour smell wafting up from the velvet throw.

Her husband is the Marquis de Sade,

perhaps our greatest romantic.

O the engineer's daughter is named Trish.