Antonyms for Fame; I am a Vender of Vintage Clothes

by | Dec 7, 2021 | Issue Twenty Four, Poetry

Antonyms for “Fame”

1.

My name is a two-piece,

my middle initial,

a diamond belly ring.

2.

In the evening,

when the swimsuits

escape their coconut-

scented bodies,

I sit cross-

legged on the portable dance

floor to think things over.

3.

My name is the dance

that someone

else’s body has memorized.

My mother

used to warn me

about my size

relative to my britches.

Antonyms for “Stephen Foster”

With such a mysterious vehicle,

it’s strange that we end up in such familiar

places, discussing sandwiches again

and forecasted changes to the weather.

Maybe we’re just whistling the way folks

passing a graveyard do. (Do-dah, Do-dah.)

Something about that Camptown melody

reminds us that we survive some pretty

weird shit: an obnoxious talking chicken

has doubts that I’m an actual person.

Sometimes, late at night, I have those same doubts.

There are people on my block flying flags

that are simple and vile, singing songs

that are magnetized, songs that raise the dead.

I Am a Vender of Vintage Clothes

Are you looking for Rayon

or moleskin?

I am a Panathenaic flutist.

Would you like to see

a truly unique scar? Of course not.

People only want to see

dog bites and plastic surgery.

There are no safe places these days

to discuss whether I’d rather show

up as Fred Flintstone

or Katherine Hepburn in her role

as Sylvester Scarlett.

These pants make me look

like David Berman, but they accent

my purple majesty.

We play The Checkered Game of Life

using cocktail toothpicks

for the missing passenger pegs

until Alice from the fetish shop

enters and proclaims,

Death will open the oysters!

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