Tonight's Poet Corner: Charles Zenkin

Charles Zenkin
by Belinda Roddie

She poured the noir whiplash
across a chipped chalice, and she let it
settle into froth before serving it to the
master of the house - Charles Zenkin, third
heir of the insignificant fortune of his
intoxicated forefathers, though
he liked to brag that his alcoholic pleasures
were much more "refined."

"Charlotte," he murmured with wet lips,
and her name was, indeed, Charlotte,
as it sounded so charming with his own title -
he wouldn't have married a Maureen.
"You seem so small, in the corner of this
green room." And so she was.
The minuscule grass blade reminder of
juvenile flings, ice cream parlor prayers over
half-melted malts as Charles became
twelve-year-old, buck-toothed Chuck. Lopsided
crescent moon below his brow, pot belly
strained beneath his stained school uniform,

and the girl with brown curls stood
tiptoe to kiss him on his sour cheek,
long before the fumes of faux wealth and happiness
plugged her nostrils, clogged her senses, and she
resigned herself
to signing his consistent bills, while Mister Zenkin
locked himself in his make-believe study and
gargled with his own vomit.