Photograph of Dr. Funkenstein: After Christian Witkin
- Photograph of Dr. Funkenstein*After Christian Witkin
A crazy evil grin, eyelids flipped Inside out, red hot and pink as pork. The tongue slipping out the mouth Suggests fellatio, and a pussy taunting dogs.
He is arrested, in custody, MOST WANTED, an atomic shaman With a scratch-and-sniff beard. I’ll bet you he Was dreaming of Venus, about to say something nasty When the photographer bopped him With a nickel bag of light into a permanent Type nod, sizzaleenmean, somewhere Between a mugshot and maximumisness
Judging from the shirt and tie, He’s well hung and may have been About to make a house call (reach Way up and give Sir Nose a splanking Or photosynthesize, a dandy lion) When the booty snatchers slapped him With a warrant, shoving him, handcuffed, Onto a death row of commodes,
A zone of zero funkativity, Violating his right to hold His own thang, his right to pee.
Thomas Sayers Ellis, an associate editor of Callaloo, is an instructor of African American literature and creative writing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He recently received the MFA in creative writing at Brown University, a few years after he co-founded the Dark Room Writers Collective. He is a co-editor of On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists and one of the emerging poets collected in Take Three. His work has also been published in Agni, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, The Harvard Review, and Ploughshares.
Footnotes
* Reprinted by permission of Grand Street and the author. This poem originally appeared in Grand Street #57 (Summer 1996).
