by Gretchen Mattox
He's waving a plastic pointer, stiff flag enter lot here,
parking
at the edge of Lincoln--bright-yellow clown suit with bold
ruffles
and
floppy shoes
(the kind with stuffed toes) and from even a short distance
he could be
anyone degraded selling what?, he could be, but he is a man,
clearly
Mexican,
underneath the nose that honks, a black mustache, illegal
alien? probably.
Like the girls in bikini tops and grass skirts outside
casinos in
Las
Vegas,
who say Come get your free lei (colored plastic wrap รก la
Hawaii), he does
what he's been told to do: on automatic, flag arm ticking
like a metronome.
Underneath the painted smile is another expression--harder
to place.
The urgency of traffic, who has time to care?
He takes his job seriously. On the way home, reverse route
back,
he's still there waving, a swimmer treading water.
From: Buddha Box.
Copyright 2004.
Painting: The Sad Clown, by Aiden Ivanov.
