Note: People don’t read poetry anymore. It’s just not relevant! So I took the liberty of modifying a classic poem — Wallace Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” — so it was about the things people actually care about today.
13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT SIDNEY SWEENEY’S BREASTS
(By Wallace Stevens; Lightly Edited by Josh Lieb)
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving things
Were Sidney Sweeney’s breasts.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three Sidney Sweeney’s breasts.
III
Sidney Sweeney’s breasts whirled in the autumn winds.
They were a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and Sidney Sweeney’s breasts
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
Sidney Sweeney’s breasts whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of Sidney Sweeney’s breasts
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how Sidney Sweeney’s breasts
Walk around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That Sidney Sweeney’s breasts are involved
In what I know.
IX
When Sidney Sweeney’s breasts flew out of sight,
They marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of Sidney Sweeney’s breasts
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For Sidney Sweeney’s breasts.
XII
The river is moving.
Sidney Sweeney’s breasts must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
Sidney Sweeney’s breasts sat
In the cedar-limbs.