Performer Behind the Glass

Echo world behind the glass, I make the same faces I did at twelve. The grinning Cheshire Cat with teeth like piano keys, mendacious and coy because viewing my portrait with sobriety forces me to march with familiar frailties. I’m certain my gravitas is a forgery. I am sure my laments and torments are playacted animation. Their drama is loathsome. Instead, I turn my left eye toward my nose while keeping the right straight. This contortion masks multiple blemishes. I summon my childhood buffoon, making self-mockery hide all my impairments. Concealing them by exposing them, I become the object of my own joke. What guise can be greater? I am Charlie Chaplin getting kicked in the rear. I am Soupy Sales hit by a sloppy pie. With this impression, I never need to try. Flashbacks on the wall. They all die like Curly Howard. Laughter is short-lived glee, after which the spirit secretly craves. My life is made of printed images on a carnival tent. Memory fragments are all I hold, each enlisting some particle of my journey. Yet with this, I find another way to fit into a clown car, another way to do my pratfalls, another way to get my pants pulled down. Accepted for publication: The Opiate, Spring 2024