*The Haystack’s Painting

The haystack’s painting hangs in the Met;
the painting of the haystack, that is,
the one by Monet, not by van Gogh,

the rose-blue, snow-lit one with the haystack
in it. The haystack has this deal
with many painters, also Millet,

appearing not for a fee, nor a stake,
exactly, but for the sovereign right
to have your eyes back whenever it wants.

*By convention, an asterisk indicates an instance of improper ­usage. All ­titles are drawn from such examples of bad grammar in Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).