Edna St. Vincent Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor

Edna St. Vincent Millay Has Her Way with a Vassar Professor
by Michael R. Burch

After a night of hard drinking and spreading her legs,
Millay hits the dorm, where the Vassar don begs:
“Please act more chastely, more discretely, more seemly!”
(His name, let’s assume, was, er . . . Percival Queemly.)

“Expel me! Expel me!”―She flashes her eyes.
“Oh! Please! No! I couldn’t! That wouldn’t be wise,
for a great banished Shelley would tarnish my name . . .
Eek! My game will be lame if I can’t milque your fame!”

“Continue to live here―carouse as you please!”
the beleaguered don sighs as he sags to his knees.
Millay grinds her crotch half an inch from his nose:
“I can live in your hellhole, strange man, I suppose ...
but the price is your firstborn, whom I’ll sacrifice to Moloch.”
(Which explains what became of pale Percy’s son, Enoch.)

Originally published by Lucid Rhythms

This poem is based on an account of Edna St. Vincent Millay being confronted by a male Vassar authority. However, there is a some poetic license involved, for the sake of humor. It was actually Vassar President Henry Noble MacCracken who mentioned Shelley. Here is his account in a response to a question about Millay cutting classes: “She cut everything. I once called her in and told her, ‘I want you to know that you couldn’t break any rule that would make me vote for your expulsion. I don’t want to have any dead Shelleys on my doorstep, and I don’t care what you do.’ She went to the window and looked out and she said, “Well on those terms I think I can continue to live in this hellhole.” The stuff about Enoch and Moloch is, of course, pure fabrication on my part. Keywords/Tags: Millay, dead, Shelley, Vassar, dorm, hellhole, drinking, partying, sex, cutting classes, poet, poets, poetess, poetry, writing