World Class
 
World class reputation became so much the norm
among amateurs who had reviewed me positively
that a cabinet for intangible effects was built,
something like a cardboard box but not quite.
 
I worried that no one read my de rien sequence.
Its natural constituency was busy writing to do lists
and loading collections onto glass-bottomed liners
for tourists to sink off the Mediterranean coast.
 
Bikini girl began my villanelle and dehydrated.
I smiled. I had known it all along. I pulled on
the cabinet’s fake drawer and felt satisfied
feeding it blank pages Xerox by Xerox.
 


* Rob A. Mackenzie lives in Edinburgh. His poems and reviews have been published in many magazines, and his first collection, The Opposite of Cabbage was published by Salt in 2009. He blogs at Surroundings.