A long corridor

is lit with candles

 

in all kinds of jars

of different sizes,

different colors.

 

*

 

Young men and women

wearing nothing but white paint

sit in a circle

 

while a couple

in the center

wrestle dances.

 

*

 

Going further,

some actors are letting

 

their facial and body hair

grow back for a film.

 

One celebrity shows off

his furry ass.

 

*

 

Teaching: I ask

how many people

have spoken to someone

who was actually listening?

 

I ask them to remember what it was like.

 

Elaine Equi teaches creative writing in the Master of Fine Arts programs at City College of New York and The New School. Widely published, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and numerous volumes of The Best American Poetry. Coffee House Press has published many of her books; in 2007 they published Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems.