Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins is the author of the poetry collections Alien vs. Predator (Penguin, 2012) and The Second Sex (Penguin, forthcoming). He’s at work on a collection of criticism, Equipment for Living, forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. He received his PhD in English from the University of Chicago.

Sunday Morning

Must you flush the toilet
while I’m in the shower?
That’s a metaphor. It means:
one system, contrary aims.

Let us say that I have come
from beyond the Lyme fields
and ironworks of mortal men.
Would you flush...