Since Ivy said she finally got the poetry postcard I sent this week, I am now free to post it here without spoiling the surprise.

Understanding Girls and Sentences

Not only is the dictionary cautious
in accepting new girls – it is careful,
perhaps not sufficiently so, about
admitting girls heard on the street –
girls exceedingly coarse and
vulgar, who we know as slang.

Such loose girls are seldom found
in print. They dwell on the outskirts
of literary society, unfit to appear.
We may think of them as vagrants.

Sometimes a girl of this sort works
her way out of the lower east side
of speech and at last gains
admittance to the dictionary; yet
where one succeeds in living down
her low origin, hundreds remain but
mouth-girls, without respectability.
Most of them live but a short time.