Charlie at the City Morgue
looks at the photos in Playboy
while naked bodies are chilled,
like cartons of eggs in the cooler drawers
For he all he knows, he gazes
at a woman’s photograph
while the woman herself lies
already so contained.
Bashful Charlie has learned
that thinking like this doesn’t pay,
as have I and you
Charlie goes out for a cigarette,
a Chesterfield, and says to the moon,
“What a romantic lousy night.”
REID MITCHELL is a New Orleanian teaching in China. More specifically, he is a Scholar in Jiangsu Province’s 100 Foreign Talents Program, and a Professor of English at Yancheng Teachers University. He is also Consulting Editor of CHA: AN ASIAN LITERARY JOURNAL. His poems have been published by CHA, ASIA LITERARY REVIEW, IN POSSE, and elsewhere and he has a collection due out from a small press in Berlin. Way back in the 20th century, he published the novel A MAN UNDER AUTHORITY. He also had a separate career as an historian of the American Civil War.