Come In

Your one-track mind takes the train 
all the way to Poughkeepsie 

but your philosophical pretensions 
won’t get you laid—I’m channeling you,

a scary thought, you flood my brain.
I woke up this morning thinking 

of James Joyce. As he dictated
Finnegan’s Wake someone knocked 

at his door. Come in, Joyce said. When 
the secretary read back her dictation, 

she included those words. Wait a minute, 
said Joyce, I didn’t say that. Yes you did, 

the secretary replied, someone knocked at 
the door and you said, come in. Then leave it in,

Joyce said. I think of the night before. 
You flood my brain—I leave you in.

ELIZABETH BURK

Elizabeth Burk is a psychologist who divides her time between New York and southwest Louisiana. Her three published collections are Learning to Love Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase, and Duet—Poet & Photographer, a collaboration with her photographer husband. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Rattle, Calyx, Southern Poetry Anthology, Louisiana Literature, Passager, The Literary Nest, Pithead Chapel, PANK, and elsewhere.