for Ms. Mitchell
 
I doubt Ms. Mitchell thought, when she said
New Yorker covers make good writing prompts,
that I’d be standing here thirty years later,
denuding these magazines with an X-acto knife,
 
so I understand the public’s recent rage
to purge my pedagogy of real or imagined
dissent and seditions. I keep to myself far more
of Ms. Mitchell’s words than this single prompt.
 
I don’t know what I’ve said that’s stuck,
that will lead to action in another three decades, 
and I feel trust’s weight and measure my syllables.
But I get it. Believe me, I get it because
 
on the one hand, it’s just old magazines,
but on the other, in the other, I hold a blade.