Faulkner, the black bird,
the whore who smashed American syntax with sledgehammer blows,
the pissed-on piss-in by luck,
the promiscuous genius in this brothel
called Literature,
was hired by the University of
Mississippi as a plumber.
Only the Land of Lost Opportunities
could indulge himself.
Controlling the boilers so that the
fat-bottomed professors
would not feel the cold of the tropics in their rectums.
Faulkner watching the clocks, the vapors,
with his back bent between the heating pipes. Looked at closely: the black bird
warming the pelvis of Mississippi,
starting from underground
all the beautiful and atrocious
and silent machinery of the tortuous virgin
literature.