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I’ve had a good relationship
with the realists who want
to wear designer glasses
and flashy three-piece suits.
It is true that I know little
about private-equity placements,
but I have often forged checks
to secure counterfeit neckties.
At times, your repeated requests
for me to deal with my wealth
seems calculated, unbelievable.
Please know that I have met
both the co-chair and the trustee.
One was half-clear, the other distorted.
Despite the recent crackdown,
we have decided to proceed
with our scratchy line drawings,
though we will not provide grace notes.
Look instead for skillful renditions
of poetic installments—
at least for the duration.
We plan to feature clever
(and not so clever) impressions
taken from our experimental excursions
into lens-less black slabs
and handmade porcelain flyswatters.
It follows that we can hardly rule out
an elegant choral accompaniment.
Thomas Cochran was raised in Haynesville, Louisiana. His work includes the novels Roughnecks (Harcourt) and Running the Dogs (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Non-fiction and poetry have appeared under his name in Oxford American, Rattle, Farming Magazine, and other publications. A schoolteacher by trade, he currently lives with his wife on a mountain in rural northwest Arkansas.
