Two male show-offs first,
then a brown-suited female
and her bright-hued mate:
Flutter, flap, splash into glide,
four ducks off the starting block.
Copyright 2014
T. Allen Culpepper
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Monthly Archives: September 2014
Downtown Sunset
Between planes of grey and black,
super-saturated mauve
bleeds in to glove skyscrapers
fingering upward against
the purple-streaked clouds of dusk.
Copyright 2014
T. Allen Culpepper
Working His Look
Smart-kid stylish, half nerdy, half cool:
Brown hair a little messy on top but regularly cut,
round wire glasses on smooth face with rosy cheeks,
wearing an open lightweight beige cardigan
over a striped boat-neck tee and high-waisted
black thigh-high shorts that show off hairy
legs long and lanky but shapely, not bony,
stretching into buckled black mid-length boots—
but a look for everyone, but one that he has nailed.
Copyright 2014
- Allen Culpepper
Clothes Horse
Appearing in a magazine whose editors
perennially advise ‘wear grey suits’
and whose actual readers wear their
plaid shirts and selvedge jeans with
simple trainers and plain brown boots,
he advertises the latest line of Versace,
the line of his body tilted back in profile,
hips thrust forward in leather trousers
adorned with copper studs and chains,
shoulders arched way back as if he’s
leaning against an imaginary wall
(a pose that’s hard to hold when
standing, but perhaps he’s on his knees,
kept just out of the shot), so that the
unbuttoned silken shirt—its black
background figured with large, circular
images of a feather-headdressed Indian
mounted on a dappled horse, unexpectedly
bridled, and bordered with colour-bold
geometry at collar and tail—
unfurls, flaglike, in the electric breeze
of an out-of-frame fan, coincidentally
revealing his muscular abs and pecs,
gym-chiseled and bottle-bronzed,
tousled golden-blond mane meticulously
misted with a spray bottle to make him
look just a little sweaty, though his skin
looks perfectly dry, his angled jaw firm,
lips petulant, and eyes shadowed, turned
slightly toward the viewer, their gaze
combining invitation with challenge,
as if he would allow you to mount
but probably throw you. Maybe, though,
he would leave you the shirt as he
galloped off into the dull grey backdrop
probably chosen to please style editors.
Copyright 2014
T. Allen Culpepper
A Strand of Hair
His slender face, angular-nosed,
capped by dark-brown hair
styled to the left, perfect but
for one dangling strand, the
tiny flaw that saves beauty
from impossibility, beard neat
but not too much so completing
the facial frame, contrasting
with clear, white skin; simply
but attractively dressed in black
Henley, buttons undone, uncuffed
grey jeans encasing long legs
dangling from the bar-height
chair, long-toed feet in flip-flops
crossed; mouth serious, mostly
focused on his work, but with
some effort—from time to time,
he raises his eyes and scans the
room, or checks his phone, smiling
only then. Not sure whether
his work is scholarly or businesslike,
his exact age also hard to call,
though he’s clearly young. At
the coffeehouse alone, but looks
likes he should be the boyfriend
of someone, whether he is or not.
But then he could be the type
who takes it all too seriously,
making long-term plans too
soon, the kind of man who
doesn’t fear commitment but
expects too much of it too soon,
and though that’s not what I need
right now or maybe ever, that
fallen strand of hair
might lasso and corral me.
Copyright 201
T. Allen Culpepper
Michaelmas Time
For James Crane, who reminded me of the term “Michaelmas daisies”
The blurry haze beginning to clear
just after the canonical hour of Terce,
filtered sun warms my skin as I
drink coffee on the front porch
on a Saturday morning in late
September, the calico cat drowsily
draped over the other chair, as
morning glory wakes and spreads
in worship its blossoms, which oscillate
in the wind like members of a charismatic
sect at public prayer, but the liturgy
does not lack irony, for is not only
the morning glory that blooms;
so too do the lavender-blue asters,
named by the Greeks for their
starry flowers, elsewhere known as
Michaelmas daises because their
season climaxes on the feast day
of the archangel-general—coincidentally
falling—as Lucifer fell from heaven
to piss on everyone’s blackberries—
near the autumnal equinox, reaching
their height as he descends from his,
harbingers of shortening days, the
waning of summer’s sun-filled hours,
the expansion of dark night from which
we call on the godlike Michael
to protect us, when the scholars
begin to sequester themselves
in the halls of learning to resume
with re-awakened vigor after
recreational holiday-making, the
excavation of their various
esoteric profundities, and a
quarter-day of reckoning as well,
when, along with the bannock-cake,
one’s goose is cooked. But aren’t the
purple asters lovely, breeze-ruffled
in softened sunshine?
Copyright 2014
- Allen Culpepper
Asters
Little explosions
of fluorescent lavender,
asters bursting forth.
Copyright 2014
T. Allen Culpepper
