Callings
I could have been a hotel barber
Buzzing with electric clippers.
I could have been a toreador
Treading the sand in silken slippers
I could have been a bistro waiter
Sneering at tiny little tippers.
I could have been a master tailor
Sewing seams and fixing zippers.
I could have been a ventriloquist
One of those mute unmoving lippers.
I could have been a train conductor
Collecting tickets from day trippers.
I could have been on a Homicide Squad
Capturing many Jack the Rippers.
I could have been a dolphin trainer
Teaching tricks to wannabe Flippers.
I could have managed a burlesque house
Hiring and firing all the strippers—
But, alas, I am just a light verse writer
Aligned with other smartass quippers.
Anthony Harrington, semi-educated in a seminary in Philadelphia, lives in Alpharetta, Georgia, and often resorts to the time-honored practice of self-publication, generating chapbooks whose small press runs get quickly exhausted because he hands them out with the zeal of a door-to-door missionary distributing leaflets. His latest collection is From the Attic: Selected Verse, 1965-2015 (Kudzu Editions, 2015).