beloved formalists will say
with feet and toes and rhymes and song
that sonnets must be writ this way
fourteen lines and quatrains strong

what they don’t know is that they’re wrong
and why they’re wrong they’ll never guess
and why my poems won’t belong
and why sonnets get bad press

fundamentally poetry is anarchy
word-fields rewilded by sumptuous metaphor and over-long lines and long-held grudges
begrudgingly relinquished into uncooperative line
breaks

I will take up whatever space I want thank you very much and if my poems have feet
it will be for dancing