With not much of a chin
and some idiot's grin
pasted on his flour-sack mug,
trailing sawdust and straw
and lord-knows-what-else,
he stumbles across the rug.
His sartorial choices
have always been thrifty,
tasteless as gravy with lumps.
Grandpa's swallow-tailed coat.
Some cousin's old tennies.
A hat like a cabbage
shedding its leaves,
salvaged from the city dump.
Their friends all believe
that he drinks to excess,
or suffers a strange disease.
When he bumps into walls,
takes amazing pratfalls,
they cannot help laughing
in spite of themselves.
Though more often
he makes them sneeze.
At the first crack of dawn
he heads off for work.
Just another day in the rows.
She can tell how it went
when he comes home at dusk
by the droppings on his clothes
She must say to herself
what choice did she have,
a woman no one would date?
But to take for a mate
one with looks just like hers.
That had to be her fate.
Though a tear sometimes seeps
from her bright button eyes,
and though she often sighs,
still she'd rather sit home
in their humble abode
than stand ramrod all day
like a cross stuffed with hay,
beneath the bird-bullied skies.
Appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine
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