Leslie McGrath: Mumblety Peg

And when the truth about the emperor’s clothes was revealed

the crowd convulsing with laughter at his flaccid gullibility

you noticed a young man easing the battered patty of a wallet

from a bald man’s back pocket. Winking, the young man stuffed

the thing into the denim pouch strapped across his chest

then with two slim fingers tweezed a phone from the purse

gaping at a girl’s shoulder. What? you sputtered, turning away

to look at something, anything, else.

You crouched to retrieve a pacifier from beneath

your toddler’s stroller and found something else down there

like a pocket knife stuck in the dirt:

the word accessory. It pegged the pacifier; it pegged you.

Copyright 2017 Leslie McGrath. Originally published in Agni. Reprinted by permission of the author.