By Michael Derrick Hudson

He’s so cute! His eyes are brilliant blue and almost
perfectly round. So sincere! Sometimes

I dream about them, outsize like Disney mammals’

or an anime hero on a quest, lustrous with heartfelt,
unambiguous virtue. Save the princess!

Let me be the princess! Gallop me away from all
my trolls and this drip-drip-drip dungeon,

whisk me away on your pharmaceutical unicorns . . .

His office artwork is insipid (at best) but I’m such
an asshole I extravagantly praise it

in order to lay a trap (although such malice is hard
when you’re on the mood elevators

he’s got me on). Such bright, happy colors, I chirp,

grinning at the mess of daffodils, yellow-on-yellow
squeezed, apparently, right out of the tube.

My wife painted that, he tells me, with such a blend
of hope, doubt, and quavery pride

that I am disarmed. Touché shrink! Bad art and
sincerity grant the believer inviolability

(at least for a while). Besides, I think he’s in love . . .

Well, even real art does nobody any good and real
artists (as Soviet judges once proclaimed

at poets’ trials) are parasitical mopes. I nod gravely,
like a connoisseur. The world

can never have too much cadmium
yellow, I tell him. Yellow is like sunshine that way.

He looks suspicious, but I think I halfway meant it . . .

---

Michael Derrick Hudson lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Boulevard, Columbia, Fugue, Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and other journals. He was co-winner of the 2014 Manchester Poetry Prize.