Pictures of the Dead Poets

[heslopian]

I wonder how different her pictures would seem
if Sylvia Plath wore bunny ears,
or maybe a fake moustache
above her spinster’s blouse in them, her smile
like a stretching rack, below cavernous eyes
which flirt with torment, while waxy synthetic hairs
obscure her upper lip.

Likewise, would John Berryman’s gaze have been less intense
if he dressed like Carmen Miranda,
his Deidre Barlow spectacles conveying the words
“I’ve felt pain you can’t dream of”
as apples and pears jostled on his skull.

Perhaps Anne Sexton might have seemed jollier if,
upon emerging from the bowl her face fell into
at the dinner table, after she’d drunk herself silly,
a mashed potato Hilterstache –
No, now we’re just being absurd.