Art and poetry on page and stage
13
Bill Evans
I’M LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Surprise! I’m Louisa May Alcott
And let me introduce
My band, Little Women
Thank you, applause
A few details —
Notice, we’re not
Women, obviously
That’s an easy one
Yes, it’s all
Showbiz, folks
You may ask yourselves
What the devil are five
Burly raconteurs doing
Up on stage, leather
Mini-skirts over Levis
And southern-trucker cowboy boots
All guitars and a full horn section
Meg on bass, Jo drums, Beth and Amy
Our dynamic rhythm aces, and me
Louisa May Alcott, front and center
Seeing how none of us ever read the novel
We consider ourselves free
To invent, oh so theatrically —
Erect a dance hall on the tongue, parenthetically, or something
It is the liberation of the transcendentalist within
It is Henry David Thoreau tromping
Ralph Waldo Emerson at canasta, bitches
It is a job: seasonal intern popcorn
Vendor on the Underground Railroad
It is Pauline’s Passion and Punishment
By A.M. Barnard, secret nom de plume
Racy, adult, suffragette writing, and it rocks hard
Bill Evans is dangerously alive and intuitively in tune. He is the author of Modern Adventures (Spuyten Duyvil). “These are the heartbeats of an ancient man looking at history from left to right and now staring us right in the eye. We are not alone.” —Eileen Myles