Here I am wondering
If my poetry will make me
A goddamn Master of Fine Arts
And you with your talking blues.

Sometimes entire days pass and one thinks about
Just money. It’s toxic.
Aren’t weekends for
Drinking beer and lemonade
And getting fucked?
Count your blessings
For they come
Every few weeks.
In between
Dream-crawl or
Write an ars poetica:
You know the form so well.

Now that burning bush
Imagery
Has replaced my
Phallic passion
I am considering that
I have a voice.
Gross and natural,
a fart captured in a seashell
I am going to write a book that can’t be sold.

A pillow book
Made of rolling papers.

Daniel Felsenthal is a fiction writer, critic, essayist, and poet whose work has appeared in Pitchfork, the Village Voice, Artforum, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Baffler, Kenyon Review, Frieze, The Believer, BOMB, and many other publications. He is also Assistant Editor at the literary annual NOON. Read more at Danielfelsenthal.com and find him on Twitter @D_felsenthal.