Charles Rossiter

They Say Clothes Make the Man

I like to wear a beret.
I started back in my college days
long before I got serious
about poetry. I liked the way
it looked on Dizzy Gillespie.

Since late adolescence
my wardrobe has always included
at least one leather vest.

In summertime Europe
I fit right in at poolside
with my sky blue speedo
surrounded by women
in high heels and bikinis.

As a 9 to 5 beltway bandit
working on grants and contracts
in a suburb of DC we all wore ties.
On my first day they took one look   
and hustled me straight to the mall,
told me I needed silk,
my campus wools would never do.

After moving east from Colorado
for college, sitting in math class,
I can still hear the girl across the aisle
as she looked with disdain
at my faded shrink-to-fit 501s,
“why do you wear those pants,
you look like you work on the railroad.”

Being a Guy

That girl I fucked
on the desk in our office
at the U on thursday nights
was open to adventure,
knew tricks I hadn’t seen.

After she did those tricks
she said,
I never did this before.

I decided to believe her.
That’s part of being a guy.

 

Charles Rossiter, NEA Fellowship recipient, most recent latest collections are Winter Poems, Lakeside Poems and Green Mountain Meditations all from Foothills Publishing, in periodicals it's Bennington Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Boog.