With This New Poem Comes Fame and My Picture on the Covers of Magazines

• And certain women will run up
• and treat me like a movie star.

• Suddenly, i’ll become handsome
• and witty and perfect,

• and other men will hate my power.
• I’ll become a famous victim of jealousy.

• And soon a fragrant light
• will hover around my head,

• and women will whisper about it.
• A great lover, the poet has become a saint!

• Later, the universe will change course.
• Slowly, it will approach me, and revolve.

• It was inevitable
• that i should die like this,

• famous grey hair,
• powerful baggy pants.

Hank Malone is a combat veteran of the Korean War and has spent the past many years as a psychotherapist. He has also been an organizer with Saul Alinsky and for ten years was a daily talk-radio host for ABC in Detroit. He writes nonfiction for Gale Research and is also a rare-book dealer. The recipient of two National Endowment grants in poetry, he is currently at work on a book of love poetry. The poet and critic Robert Peters once described Malone’s work as likely “the finest love poems since E.E Cummings.” Several of his books and collectibles can be found on Finebooks.com.