[Gibson Girl’s] is a pastiche poem I’ve written in the style of E. E. Cummings’ [Buffalo Bill’s]. I was stunned of sorts by the unique form, illuminating diction, and allusive imagery of the original poem, which I have tried to emulate in my own.

[Gibson Girl’s] speaks to the life of 1900s It girl Evelyn Nesbit, making reference to how her life was “wasted” in her marriage, foreshadowed by the alliterative “waisttight” dress of alluring elegance. Her beauty was enough to “snap” men as though they were playthings, but the word also references how her first husband, so enamored, “snap[ped]” and murdered the man he saw as his romantic rival.

When they eventually divorced, this husband left her with near nothing of his fortune in his will. The final question to “Mister Munroe” is a sardonic nod to the pseudonym her husband used when first pursuing her, where he deceived her of his true self and the misfortunes that would inevitably befall the girl he once so adored.