03.16
Although listed on the program
I didn’t get to speak. Concluding
the evening, you waved your moustache
at the crowd and blessed us all.
The mob flowed up the aisles, leaving
me nailed to my seat. The night howls
as I sulk in the empty space.
The janitor prowls around me
with his broom. He doesn’t tell me
to leave, the rage boils around me
like a blue ring around the moon.
You’ve probably gone home by now,
your motive for excluding me
as obscure as the poems you write
in honor of civil war heroes.
You trust in tradition and pride,
but your striped shirts hurt my eyes
and your neckties dangle like snot.
Speaking of your prehensile nose,
which probes at angles no one
else achieves, it resembles
an ugly animal bypassed
by evolution. Please keep it
to yourself, and however deeply
you shrug off this slight, beware
of my lack of taste for revenge.
The cold beckons. The janitor
looks sorry. I exit in haste,
my dignity rumpled on the floor
beside my favorite scarf, the one
a friend finished knitting a day
before she died of boredom
alone in one yellow room.