Kimberly L. Wright

Scamming the marks

His bedeviled mom and skirt-chasing dad 
let his teeth rot. The Air Force doted on him  
in comparison – pulling his teeth before sending him  
 
out to Greenland to glare east toward the Soviet Union.  
In the cargo hold, some stowaway froze to death. 
Two decades, two wives and three careers later,  
 
he traipsed around the East Coast as carnie-barker  
sucking down whiskey like mother's milk, 
where he met wife No. 3, a scrawny 19-year-old 
 
who traveled up from Hialeah to the carnival in Belle Glade 
and joined the company because her car ran out of gas, 
leaving her livid mother a letter a week later. 
 
When the prodigal she returned with a fiancee 
the mother gave her a black-eye dowry. 
The girl-woman was dazzled into marriage  
 
amid the kaleidoscope of lights, visions of babies 
dancing to tinny organ music played on a loop 
among a lobster man and bearded lady. 
 
Florida smog of cigarette smoke haloed  
his face, cleancut in the time of hippies. 
He sang Irish tenor and sweet-talked 
 
the marks out of their money, 
his stutter not transmitted on the microphone, 
his false teeth hidden until the marriage license.


Kimberly L. Wright’s poetry has appeared in publications such as Poydras Review, Eunoia Review, Blood Lotus Journal, UCity Review, October Hill Magazine and Southern Review Online. Her first collection of poetry, Not pictured, was published by Finishing Line Press in March. She’s worked as a journalist for 20 years and lives in Woodstock, Georgia.