Alexander Morgan lives and writes in Birmingham, Michigan, USA. 

TV Berates the Snob
By Alexander Morgan

He was not of an age but for all time!

—Ben Jonson on Shakespeare

For decades, you took me for granted.
Called me a wasteland.
Made me cry.
Your waist
hasn’t always been to brag about.
Just sayin’.

You sniffed how you had better things to do.
Even a shitty book
better than the best TV,
you said,
you insensate to anything not pre-blessed by Harold Bloom.
Just sayin’.

But now, I’m not the awkward adolescent
I used to be,
so easy to mock down
the lonely hallways.
I’ve grown into a beauty.

My golden age merely
my cute girlhood, then the ghastly
adolescence. We’ve already talked about that.
Don’t we all have one of those?
Even you.
Just sayin’.

It took a while,
then twenty years more
for certain miserable slubberdegullions
to pay attention to
the new me.
Just sayin’.

So, call it fifty years to mature into my now-glorious self.
Like Shakespeare had his fifty.
Go ahead.
Foam and goggle about how I compared myself to Shakespeare.
I’m here for a graceful long maturity,
maybe even for all time.