This Gorilla Called Philip Sidney (for Roy Scranton) by Sharon Mesmer
Miss Pamela ♀ (“The Aunt of Fear”)
invented the Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney,
in whose cottage are found invisible clues to the sources
of Ted Nugent, wicked aboriginal stepmother
of Sir Philip Sidney.
This gorilla called Philip Sidney,
keeper of the shared surprise
of running naked through the Gorilla House,
wants to prove he can bring Uncle Esperanto
back from the dead.
I hear squirrels talking about this.
The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room —
a Jewish Philip Sidney biting his own “truant penis”
(“look in thy heart / and expect / a 600-pound
truant penis”) —
passes Voldemort parmesan
in the shadows where I ruined my life,
then clawed my way back through 108
pig-hearted sonnets to my old familiar
dick-to-mouth existence.
One thing that I teach all my composition students
is that the gorilla promotion code is always
“Philip Sidney is Vienna’s Answer to Hash Browns,
Congo the Chimp Is Back in the Art World,
and You Have Zero Facts.”
— Philip Sidney, at the top of a tent pole,
scratching himself like a gorilla
in all his “nature places.”
The smell shall haunt me
to the end of days.
Sharon Mesmer is a two time New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in poetry. Among the nine books of poetry and fiction she’s had published are: Half Angel, Half Lunch (Hard Press), Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books) and The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose Press). She is considered one of the main practioners of the Flarf poetry movement, and several of her Flarf pieces will appear in the forthcoming Postmodern American Poetry — A Norton Anthology.