Alice (Poem by Clara B. Jones)

Alice

for Robin (Asheville, 2015-2016)

You are a radical poet in love with a

transgender rap star who speaks Russian and

sings patriotic songs about Putin's good

looks--decompensating like silt sliding down

McKinley or bones decaying in the Sahel.

If you don't do something now you'll never

be the same again unless your pets run away

or Paul Beatty wins another prize though you

ate lobster on the beach where your cousin

brought a kilo that she shared with Richard's

wife whose puppy ran in Lagrangian move-

ments around the fire. You're as troubled as my

nephew Alice whose husband studied ants in

Sudan before the revolution changed every-

thing, and his thesis was a referendum on

animal rights when another case of hack-

ing proved his theory about the American way.