Aesthetics of Being a Truth Universally Acknowledged

Be poorer than you deserve

and have a more charming sister.

Aesthetics of Dido, Turning from Aeneas in the Underworld

  Anger is the ash

that fell in flakes

around your extinguished pyre.     

            Forgiveness,

the unspoken promise

between pistil and stamen

in the myrtle grove.

Aesthetics of the Bouquets in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum

Be Pee Gee hydrangeas webbed with curly willow branches and tiger lilies.

Be designed by a third-generation Dutch florist.

Be endowed.

Be new every week.

Aesthetics of Percy Bysshe Shelley

Call love

“Imagination”

and make it mandatory.

Aesthetics of Surviving on a Desert Island

 Search for driftwood.

            Remember old songs.

                        Become a better swimmer.

Aesthetics of Porch Ants

Keep quiet in the roots

of the potted jade plant.

 Aesthetics of Being the Only Woman at The Conference Table

 Wear a crisp white collar.

Have the nicest pen.

Aesthetics of Flannery O’Connor

 Include a grandmother,

a pet, and a pistol.

Name someone after a virtue.

Tuck the analogia entis

in between the killer

and the killed.

Aesthetics of Leaving Home

Tell your mother you’ll be back

and try to remember you said so.

Aesthetics of Pennies

 Late capitalism’s

            breadcrumbs.

No longer copper.

            Still jangle.

Aesthetics of Edwin Austin Abbey’s “Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Lady Anne” (1896)

 She gives the red crowd

nothing but the slightest flush

of her high-boned cheek.

That her eyes were basilisks.

Aesthetics of In Medias Res

 Start running

before they turn on the camera.