Auditioning Anchormen
There were clowns and armpits
and clowns and arm
pits and there were window
washers arm wrestling each other
and armpits and there was one
odd little man in the corner
whose white bones glowed
when a shadow passed over him
whose body had clearly
been wandering forever in the desert,
tripping over its own bleached skull
every twenty years or so
The Lucite Pranksters
The best-selling hopper takes a seat on a heap of umbrage,
opposite Howard McNear, who played
Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith show,
wearing a little hat, a nano-hat even,
for which there is no backstory. Then
the Lucite Pranksters are stabbing and stabbing,
and the cart-topping hopper hangs his nano-hat on a blood flower,
heads for the receding door,
the gangplank door,
below which is another angry little pile
with another Howard “Floyd” McNear sitting on it,
holding it down, and another pair
of the Lucite Pranksters with another pair of golden dirks,
with which they dirk and dirk—
the popular hopper feels like he’s inside a tomato,
at the fulcrum of the tomato,
doesn’t know whether to eat
or scream his way out
