Elegy
“Even Duccio can’ t match
Giotto’ s stage management of great tragedy”:
Transgendered Professor Y. in leather miniskirt
paces before the screen, wood pointer
scraping saint faces, slapping
hunched women of the Lamentation.
Blue-gold tumult of the chapel walls.
After-lunch lecture hall heat.
You’ re in that class with me. We go on
from there — not long. You do The Waste Land
in different voices — Come in under the shadow
of this red rock — Strom Thurmond, Aussie
bartender, Cantonese. HURRY UP PLEASE