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!
Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. He has three current books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and The Cream City Review.