Aaron Belz

FAKE

-Where'd you get that Angora sweater, Janice?
-Oh never mind, Leroy, it's fake.

Things like that stick in your teeth like a DQ cone.
Chances are, you got it with some of the red
syrup that hardens into a shell.

They remember that even a Corvette has a plastic shifter.

Suddenly it's like, what in the crap??
Who ordered all the extra kitty litter?

There's that milk commercial where the man admits
that he bought a CZ engagement ring because it was cheaper.
Or had his wife found out about his time in jail?

Wasn't it Eliot who said something about little dried tubers?
Auden wrote about the emissary's patent leather shoes,
in that typically wry, songbird style of his.
Ashbery wrote about a river that flows automatically,

and I think he was right. There is no river;
people think that way because we can still
remember our fathers, who were born before TVs.

Meanwhile I sit here in a white business shirt
that's 45% poly, and my wife sits there in rubber shoes.

Both at least one-time losers, both to an extent fake.

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