Free, the price tags shiny with white-out, it’s free,  
I go shopping with Dodie, the red shiny bag at Kate Spade 
on Grant, let’s go into Agnes B and see how much the  
shirt cost that Chris and Brian bought me 
Save, long time ago I thought you could save me 
I pictured a dreamy house like Elizabeth  
Robinson’s, with a sunken tub, but instead I settle 
for Squalid Manor, Frank O’Hara’s dull apartment 
“Build three more stately mansions, O my soul,”
I hear a voice that rings, it might be Kylie Minogue 
the sexiest tomboy beanpole on the planet,  
that which I walked in size eight shoes, for to 
Buy the ones we saw in the window, May sun 
splattering them with pixels, we saw ourselves 
the two of us, and I said, Ah, what’s the matter with me,  
I have nothing to look forward to 
Ship of pearl, which poets feign,  
Sail the unshadowed main— 
The venturous bark that flings, and suddenly 
the pavement tears itself apart, a lift appears 
Man comes up through the sidewalk 
in front of Stella McCartney store in New York 
a little bit down from Joe and Charlie’s 
To have seen so much, to have missed so much! 
Why, next time we will do better, till our 
bleeding feet spurt compassion in our hearts— 
in our next life when, perhaps, we will return 
as a shell on the beach and a little pink kitten,  
Lucy.
From Action Kylie (In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni, 2008). Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Killian. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 25, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.