WHEN BILLY COLLINS MET ANNE SEXTON

She comes to see him like a pig in a trenchcoat, performing an
autopsy on
a candle, and tells him to flee on his donkey if he still values his
old dwarf
heart. Love, she says, with some women is like a long distance
telephone
call. Say what you have to say and hang up. And don't call collect. He
is
reading the encyclopedia today, running a finger of inquisition along
the
page, marveling at the comments made in the margin. "Pardon the
egg
salad stains, but I'm in love," he finds quaint and reassuring and
there are
ketchup stains. That's blood, she says, my blood. Have you got
anything
around this place I can kill myself with again? he hesitates,
awkwardly
trying to close the open pages of the Victoria Secret catalogue. He
is
embarrassed by the end tables with genitals he owns and wishes he
hadn't
been playing Art Blakely so loud. She reminds him of some Irish cows
he
once saw lying down in a field waiting for the rain. He politely
mentions a
Monk with a snow shovel he knows, Buddha with snowshoes, and then
reads the mail. She slits her wrists with the letter opener. He is not
use to
her kind. I am a secret agent, she deadpans, torturing myself all over
the
place and still not talking. It's easy to confess in this dress she
says and
lights another cigarette. Billy frets about the Bonsai tree and recites
to it a
favorite haiku. I learned to write poetry from watching an
educational
television show she admits and sticks her head into the oven. Just
keeping
in practice she says. Staying in shape for the big escape. He proudly
tells
her he has written hundreds of poems without ever once mentioning
death.
The less said the better, she tells him. Besides it doesn't rhyme with
much.
That' why I write free verse. She slips out of her dress, lies back
and
spreads her legs. She is still beautiful. He bemoans a world without
hats
and asks, Do you know a word that rhymes with Carolina? She
smiles
slyly and draws the shade. He wonders whether having intercourse with
a
dead poet would be in his best interest. Outside the jagged flash
of
lightning tears the sky. By now even Lolita has children of her
own.
People in glass houses shouldn't write poems, Anne sighs and dies,
again
in his arms.