"vassar" poems
Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor
by Michael R. Burch
After a night of hard drinking and spreading her legs,
Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs:
“Please act more chastely, more discretely, more seemly!”
(His name, let’s assume, was, er ... Percival Queemly.)
“Expel me! Expel me!”—She flashes her eyes.
“Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That wouldn’t be wise,
for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my name ...
Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque your fame!”
“Continue to live here—carouse as you please!”
the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees.
Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his nose:
“I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I suppose ...
but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll sacrifice to Moloch.”
(Which explains what became of pale Percy’s son, Enoch.)
Originally published by Lucid Rhythms. This poem is based on an account of Edna St. Vincent Millay being confronted by a male Vassar authority about her rogue behavior. However, there is a some poetic license involved, for the sake of humor. It was actually Vassar President Henry Noble MacCracken who mentioned Shelley. Here is his account in a response to a question about Millay cutting classes: "She cut everything. I once called her in and told her, 'I want you to know that you couldn't break any rule that would make me vote for your expulsion. I don't want to have any dead Shelleys on my doorstep, and I don't care what you do.' She went to the window and looked out and she said, 'Well on those terms I think I can continue to live in this hellhole.'" The stuff about Enoch and Moloch is, of course, pure fabrication on my part.
Keywords/Tags: Millay, dead, Shelley, Vassar, dorm, hellhole, drinking, partying, *** cutting classes
Apr 17, 2020
Apr 17, 2020 at 12:32 AM UTC
A terrible slap fence him round Poughkeepsie
those tips umbrella a man and that egress as
her wiles portray any scoundrel there
though break dance may pray for both their future
that make an acquisition privately monitoring
but colorful proposition of any expectations
in this hazelnut fortune of yesterday in Vassar.
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 11:48 PM UTC
Jane, how could you?
After his books burned in the fire and
he left you to supply the miners
Did you feel abandoned?
The railroad money flowed
and you were a fine hostess, my dear.
But the universe would not abide
calling back the only thing you ever loved.
Jane, your suspicions had good cause.
Born on 11:11,
a fortress of arches and corbels
fed with your mother’s milk
nursed into existence.
You refused to lose another child.
Your mother’s gaze left with nothing to caress
save the sun-drenched marble;
a golden facade to hide your pain.
Loving those golden doors
with an unwavering tenacity;
clutching your only offspring
close to your breast.
Mere feathers in an empty nest.
Under patriarchal pressure
from the east,
vowing to never be
a second Vassar,
weak and emasculated.
We are a castle of ivy, you cried,
not an orchard in bloom.
A seed planted in name of your son-
grown in his memory-
should never bear such fertile fruit.
Each earthy golden pear
an affront to his manhood.
Jane, you traitor!
Susan B could never look you in the eye again.
That such an edict
Should come through a woman!
To plant a garden of narcissus
where daffodils should grow.
Yet sacrifice
would not save you.
A sip at 11:11,
soft sand,
spring water,
silence.
A tropical whitewash.
Now she stands near her men,
a little below and off to the side,
subservient to eternity.
Sweet Jane,
would things have changed
if you had borne a girl?
Mar 21, 2019
Mar 21, 2019 at 5:42 PM UTC