Three women poets
in white bras
sit at a small
round table.
Book in hand.

A man in a pirate sweater
comes in through the door
out of the snowstorm and sits down
at the women’s table.

He takes off his sweater.

He touches
one of them,
they are all dead.
And won’t come alive again.
Though they await his kisses.

Then he rises
scoops up in his arms the woman he had touched
and carries her out.

The draft
as the door flies open and falls shut
leafs through the pages of the three
books.