By Philip Wexler
I asked the man with the red rubber horn of a nose, floppy red and white striped hat, and flouncy white pajama-like attire, whose face was freshly powdered whether he was pretending to be a clown. He objected that it wasn’t a matter of make believe, that he was a clown, the real thing. I said it was preposterous, there are no real clowns, only people acting the part of clowns, just as there are no actual aliens from outer space or zombies or elves. People can get themselves suited up, of course, conforming to what such imaginary creatures are generally believed to look like, and play the role. He maintained that I was wrong but, misunderstanding me, yielded on the point of clowns being preposterous. That assessment, according to him, I’d hit on the nose. As for me, he asked confrontationally, whether I was who I was pretending to be or an out-and-out fake. I was perplexed by the question but decided not to ask for clarification. I told him I was myself, not pretending to be anyone else. “Good,” he said, “then we are two of a kind.” With that, he offered me a spare bulbous rubber nose which he pulled deep from within a vast kangaroo-pouch-like pocket drooping from his belt. Sincerely touched by his generosity despite my admittedly intrusive interrogation, I stretched it over my own nose. He wished me luck as he hopped on a unicycle. Impulsively, I did a back handspring to land on his shoulders. He smiled in approval as if to say I was a quick study. The next thing you know, there we were wobbling along the curving road pretending to be ourselves and so very sure of it.
Philip Wexler has over 200 magazine poem credits. His full-length poetry collections include The Sad Parade (prose poems), and The Burning Moustache, both published by Adelaide Books, The Lesser Light (Finishing Line Press), With Something Like Hope (Silver Bow Publishing) and I Would be the Purple (Kelsay Books). He also hosts Words out Loud, a hybrid in-person and remote monthly spoken word series in the Washington, DC area.
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