New Evidence

I'm sitting in my best friend's dining room
With three bad poets and a publisher
Of coffee table nature books. I stir
My lukewarm coffee and explore the gloom
(Some light bulbs have burned out. It's like a tomb).
The pretty one thinks she could (I concur)
Sell chapbooks with good photographs of her
On the front cover. I think I sense doom.

The food is bad, the company is dull,
The poetry is awful — mine stinks, too —
And every one of us is looking through
The others, hoping some event will cull
The others. There's a pounding in my skull,
New evidence that poetry is true.