A Portrait
This self-adoring dimwit bullies everyone he can,
mistaking such behavior for the conduct of a man.
At threescore ten, what is he but a geriatric boy
who operates in two modes only: swagger and destroy.
Robert West‘s poems have recently appeared in Light, Alabama Literary Review, Algebra of Owls, The Gravity of the Thing, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, and Still. Co-editor of Succinct: The Broadstone Anthology of Short Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013), he’s also the editor of The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons (forthcoming in Fall 2017 from W. W. Norton). He lives in Starkville, Mississippi.