Tonight's Poet Corner: The Comedians

The Comedians
by Belinda Roddie

We are the comedians. We are the
jesters of old Nottingham, fixed
bells on our shoe buckles, chewing up
microphones and expected to chuckle
when we break our canines on the metal.

We are given piss water to drink, in hopes
that they will get a rise out of us. So we'll
crack a sloppy, lockjawed
smile over it and pass a barb or two around
like a bowl of soggy mixed nuts with the shells
already half-cracked and the mess inside
soaked by the facility's humidity. We are
raised up onto a stage and expected to levitate
above the floor just enough
to avoid the trap door.

We are the comedians. We spend
excess time on our self-deprecation. We
bite our thumbs at critics and make goofy faces
when they paint their faces red in frustration.
Don't worry - sticks and stones are meant to
hurt us more severely, because in every

book, film, TV show, magazine, and other
pamphlet stapled together by dry men's
fingernails, we are nothing
but a joke. And we are meant to recite the
stories that we are told are ours, are our
generation's - the silly, goofy, narcissistic

generation. We are meant to rib
ourselves enough to cause contusions,
and internal bleeding, and
costochondritis, and the ulcers open up
deep in our abdominal cavities when the crowd
tells us to dance again. And we do.
And we laugh.