This now eternal eve
I wanted to look
like a writer
so coiled pages
into my back pocket
like I did when
youth was endless
so any sky
a poem.
You called me a troll
who uses literature
to beguile
young women.
I shook my shoulders
at your indecency.
You shook yours
at my age,
bragged about
a degree from
Cam-
bridge.
I discouraged
boasting,
pointed to modesty
as an ideal,
generosity
a discipline.
“Creep,”
you began again.
Now me:
I believe in
eternal verities
but sometimes old writers
must weaponize verse
to destroy imposters,
pseudo-academic philosophers.
Sometimes truth is
as a thing appears:
your big red hair
of a million selfies;
robotic eyes,
blue like tin;
your height a hunch
beneath the stalled sun
of this now
eternal eve.
Calvin Jolley