Poetry – Kevin Higgins

Advisory Epistle From Literature Quangocrat
after Alexander Pope 

About my person, I at all times carry
a bowl of re-heated cocktail sausages
and a completed application form asking
that I be better funded next year. I only read novels
which interrogate the relationship
between gout and Islamist terrorism,
translated from the obligatory French;
and poets whose words make me sink
more comfortably into
my brown swivel chair.

It’s taken five hundred thousand Euro
strategically invested by a range
of government agencies
over the past three years to give
the literature loving public
me sitting here in this office, knowing
the name of the third most
popular poet in Mongolia;
a country I had to visit
three times last year,
at your expense, to ascertain
the correct pronunciation
of said verse-maker’s name.

My most ardent followers,
a hairy-palmed crew
of professional online smoochers
who append themselves to me
on the off-chance, like maggots
around an untreated wound,
each with an avant-garde masterpiece safely
locked way inside his or her head.

My own favourite writers? By far
those who are on nobody’s
side but their own.