Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

You want the biodegradable poet,

the one who reeks of someplace else,

where silence falls like lava. 

But here in the roaring marketplace,

the challenge is to love the rest—

the shiny ones, the chatty ones, 

those with the green eyes of jadukars,

the flabby ones, hypoallergenic,

combustible, made of Polynesian,

pink sugar, recyclable. 

Those who know the king, 

And those who know the queen. 

Those whose heads churn with serpents— 

the glamorous, the has-been, 

those who follow the tailwinds of the gods

who ride on narco bus poets 

of parabon and formaldehyde. 

Literate gaze, take them all in— 

the fallen, the forgettable, the hungry-eyed. 

For you’ve been there too,

suspended between trust and terror,

fevered, learning to surf the tide. 

And you’ve known the doubting,

and you’ve known the seething. 

And you know how easy it is to forget

that wide, that wide, wider breathing. 

And yes, you know the irony 

that even those committed to their own guilt-edged glory— 

even those seized by vaporous causes— 

seem to know at times how to sing with word, and sometimes, just sometimes, 

how to singe with pause.