It would be fanciful to believe she wrote the odd couplet
In between exchanging gunfire with some state trooper,
Or knocked off a couple quick stanzas
While hotly pursued by some city police roadster,
Siren wailing and sidewalls straining.
Most likely, they were the product of the down times,
The doldrums between bank jobs,
A time to patch wounds and grab the odd forty winks,
Time given to reflecting upon what had transpired,
More likely that which lurked in some indeterminate future.
As to what lay between the covers
Of those dime-store notebooks
(One wonders how they were procured,
By coins fished from the bottom of some threadbare purse,
Or taken gratis, either brazenly or on the sly)
Their consideration has devolved
Into the love child of curiosity and notoriety,
To be imitated by devotees of her brief romp through history
Or sniffed at by the theses-laden as mere juvenilia,
Though they may grant her a certain if tentative feel for rhyme,
Perhaps acknowledge a joie de vivre in her lines,
But if one reads and perhaps reads again,
Something else comes forth,
A thing which some might argue marks the true poetess,
A rendering of the realization that one's life
Can be full or failure at twenty-three or eighty-three
And that the interval between the two
May or may not be preferable
To the brief flash of light, the brief yet excruciating sting
Which precedes the grim darkness.
