take the money

By E. A. Bourland

in 1989
I was going to be
a children’s
psychologist
then
for mercenary reasons
I got into poetry

I would write
unrivaled poems,
and my circumstances,
which had always
hovered between
penurious and destitute,
would get
nice and fat

there would be stacks
of my works for sale in
bookstores,
mobs at my readings,
damaged women
precipitating
undies stageward,
offers of interviews,
and nominations which
I would firmly refuse . . .

all of this fineness
would
fall around me
in a
porcelain mist

I was going to
get
clothes,
food . . .

one thing I’ll never do
is accept
an award

don’t be
award-winning

if you’re award-winning
that means
you
have opened
your ass
even
more

take the money,
if there ever is any,
and spend it on
the
bravest whores

forget the awards

awards are for corporations . . .

who won the whitaker bumfuck prize in 2006?

a fuck-up, that’s who

roll
around on your gold
like a fat
dragon
and keep your
dignity

every time
a slob
wins an
award
a hearse wrecks
into a haberdashery
then careens
through a whorehouse
and drops the corpse
in a daycare

on the 90
down
to eastern market
in 2019
a bright
fine
person I think,
her laugh
was
a lemon tree,
looks up soft
and pummeled from
the face of
her glimmering device