The Uptown Cultural Center's
Liason for Community Education
Steps to the podium and gives a brief speil
About the essential nature
Of poetry in the community,
And how poetry is for everyone,
Then sneaks off through a back door
The moment the poetry begins.
I see her in her office
With her feet up
Reading Cosmopolitan.
As the poems about oppression
And loneliness begin in earnest,
The poets read their poems
About the callousness
Of a public apathetic
To their sacrifices,
Then disappear one by one
After reading
Until finally it's just me,
The open bar,
And poetry...
Again.
