Gladys Justin Carr

Lady Gaga Sings To Us

(a sextet for John Ashbery)

a. listen don’t make a poem of it just tell the story once upon another time Lady Gaga sang it was, I think, bloody Mary b. dearest tempest: I letterpress my apologies for dancing topless with underage philosophies

c. do come to my dinner of losses sun slides at seven off the table d. you said you would come you did not now you say you will not come I am expecting you e. ah, kumquat: did you forget? well, if this is dying like Strachey, I don’t think much of it f. someone ( was it you? ) pressed mute

Gladys Justin Carr is an award-winning poet, whose work has appeared in over 100 journals and magazines in the U.S. and Canada, and the author of a chapbook, Augustine’s Brain—The Remix. She is a recovering publishing executive who dropped out of Corporate America to write full time. Her debut poetry collection, brunch, is forthcoming, as is her first flash fiction collection, Hopper’s Women. Carr is a former Trustee Fellow at Smith College and University Fellow at Cornell. The Legends Internship Program at the Poetry Center of Smith College is named after her. She lives in New York City and East Hampton, N.Y.