To The Power Of

Laughing whores called him The Teapot.
Lautrec sprained their long black stockings with his brush.

Josephine’s lapdog,
misinterpreting his new master’s carnal enthusiasm
as an assault on their mutual mistress,
attacked Napoleon on his wedding night.
Napoleon’s penis was described in Christie’s Auction Catalogue
as “a small, dried-up object.”

Everyone’s familiar
with Hitler’s singularity.

We are all of us little,
and share this well-documented tyrannical streak.
Can hobble on this crutch
like perfect Tiny Tims.

Heads cocked, men
innocently drop their crushed beer cans,
their model trains, their swords,

to pick us up.

And we are so light
they barely feel us sitting on their shoulders

like a jockey
like
an exponent.