Malik Selle

What Is a Celebrity Family?

I am dirt stuffed in the mouth
of Elia Kazan, that old fink
is buried now
And sure as Roy Cohn’s cancer
I was adopted
My biologicals: Lizzie Borden
And Philip Roth sit up at the lake
in lawn chairs enjoying the sunset
their wrinkled love a treasure

so why do people have such a hard time
meeting, is my dopey sister doomed
to spinster life
even though my mother tells me
the women in our family
cook like Bettie Page and
love-make like Martha Washington.
I was eating dinner
one night and remembered

not all political epiphanies feel as good
as in my youth; Tricky Dick’s yankee-doodle-doo
used to play The Shangri-Las
And my dad only caught us once
watching as he tapped his foot to the beat

.

Malik Selle is a writer and visual artist. His fiction and poetry have appeared in America and abroad, in publications such as Beyond Words Magazine, The West Trade Review, and others. Recently, he has presented artwork in several group shows at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto. He often collaborates with the Lavender Film Club, a collective based in San Francisco — lavender film club.

.

Back