After Koch 2 (by Mitch Sisskind)

There was a day I mused to the class
How making love with Queen Elizabeth
Would be interesting – surely at Columbia
I was the only professor who thusly mused
And I often mused, as when I mused how
Poets would be interested in the word ashtray
But prose writers would be interested in all
The different people who used the ashtray
Or when I mused on Friday, February 7, 1964,
As the Beatles first arrived on these shores
That it would be interesting to be famous like
The Beatles and meet beautiful Brit women
And one of the students said, “Elizabeth again?”
So I laughed and mused, “God save the queen.”

 

Comments

[The Best American Poetry]

Thank you, Professor Koch. I appreciated especially the distinction between prose and poetic ashtrays. The whole concept of the ashtray is much misunderstood. -- Jonas Berry

[DAVID M. KATZ]

Godamn the Koch brothers for stealing Kenneth's name!

[Katherine Koch]

How do you think I feel? A once proud name, formerly only confused with that of Mayor Koch’s, now dragged down into dust.