Jeanette Lynes, originally uploaded by johnwmacdonald.

Touring around with a new book. A slender, popped-up volume on the life of Dusty Springfield. It’s Hard Being Queen is a lot of fun and of course, it has teeth. From “The Producer’s Poem.”

She’s the sound of elsewhere, the struck note
you don’t hear every day. The alien trout
that melts your tongue then poisons you.
It would take so little, now, to throw her back
into the stream, walk
away. He wonders when they might graduate
to a whole word, an entire song.

“When it’s right,” she says. “It’s still not right.”