Dust Jacket (from 2000)

Someday I will appear on the back of a book. Who I am will be splayed on the dust jacket, the back part, the black and white photo where my face is cocked sideways a bit, alluring, leading, longing quite possibly lounging on a red chair, my right leg tossed like a sweaty gardening shirt over the velveteen arm. I look awash in knowing and concupiscence, alert while innocuously insouciant, a writer for the times, the bedfellow my readers confer with or confess to, magnificent ringleader that I will be, gathering the hoipoloi around me like a herd of somnambulistic lions drowsy on blood but ready for more action. There will be more than two sentences about me. Who I am will remind everyone of their own penchant for some deserved if miniscule prominence and they will be glad it is I who have attained recognition, I who have the log cabin in the country perched beside a working windmill and naturally-occurring pond where I live prosperously with my husband, an artist and two children who read beyond their ages. The masses will memorize me. Who I am will percolate and permeate synapse and cell, skin and soul. My incendiary words will be etched like a child’s initials in freshly poured concrete, there for infinity even after sleep marks the end of the rhyme.