On First Reading Kay Ryan's Poems

Homage to New Poet Laureate

Where
Were you
Those years
I needed you
When critics
Told me
Little
Tall
Thin
Poems
Did not
Work
Only
Old maids
Like Emily Dickinson
or old farts
Like Me
Write
Poems
Sticking up
Like a
Middle Finger
At the world.

(Appeared originally in The New Verse News)