We know this isn’t really going to fly
[Some laughter can be heard] but we should tell
Them that we’re doing all we can . . .
It’s not as though we really told a lie,
I mean, you know? Right? . . . Well, just let it sell.
We’ll be done before they . . . Hey, man,
This is bullshit. I can’t fucking read this . . .
He’ll do whatever we want. Tell them whatever.
Make it up if you have to . . . losers. Yup.
Wait a second. Is someone taking a piss?
You know? Fuck these people . . . wait, is this thing on?
[Flushing sound] . . . You know, I thought he’d never
Shut the fuck up. Man, this shit’s really fucked up.
You know what? Who fucking cares? We’ll be gone.

From The Hopkins Review, Volume 14, No. 2, including new poems by Terrance Hayes, Spencer Hupp, Paul Bone, Shane McCrae, Craig Santos Perez, and others, as well as Tess Taylor’s essay “Buc Could a Dream: Form and Freedom in Gwendolyn Brooks’s Domestic Sonnets” and Anna Maria Hong’s “Three Mothers, Two Eves: Female Virtuosity and Outrage in the American Sonnet.” Click here to learn more or to subscribe.