Chris Brown

The Immature Poet’s Estate

begins to worry about the dialogue
inculcated in the memory

of the phones
the independent audit

that will ensue
now that the men have been down

to confiscate the hard drive
stares deeply into the space where the

filing cabinet stood -
have they the letterknives out for me

in the strongrooms of arbitration
was the watermark in the poem ‘authentic’ enough?

this oeuvre of dis/ingenuous declarations -
and all of it set down indelibly

so that even as he types in the keywords
best bloopers or truly naïve art

and rounds a corner
in some giant modem

she looms up shocking him
like love become acrimony

                  *

two weeks later
someone likes the work