Burma-Shave
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Burma-Shave was a shaving cream brand that advertised along American highways from the 1920s to the 1960s using rhymed quatrains posted in sequence on roadside signs. This poem pays homage to those signs—and to the strange poetry of travel, memory, and Americana.
They stood like rhymes
on fencepost spines
with wisdom scrawled
in shaving thymes—
a roadside gospel,
terse and sweet
that preached with
meter, grit, and heat.
Rosemary likes
a clean-shaved man,
if wooing her
is in your plan.
She’ll linger near
and take your hand
and proudly wear
your golden band.
Parsley hides
beside the plate—
the garnish mocked
by those who ate.
But lean in close—
she knows the names
of all who passed
and played their games.
Sage recalls
those roadside lines—
poetry caught
between the pines.
Sometimes sly
and sometimes wise,
a fleeting truth
before my eyes.
They’re all gone now
fenceposts bare—
but I still see
those rhymes out there.
Burma-Shave.
Copyright © Roxanne Andorfer | Year Posted 2025
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