Birmingham
Poetry
Review
Exposures
A dozen of us 8th graders pose
in masks at a Halloween party-
I'm the pirate, then the princess,
bum, some small burrowing animal-
and then without our masks, although
we still carry traces of pretending,
my cocked hat, the bum's smudged cheek
the animal girl still pert and curious-
those few years we absolutely knew
the strongest, prettiest, smartest,
each category with its one winner-
and we smile in the disguises
we can never completely remove,
the faint dirt of some future defeat,
the boy who will forget his treasure,
the glitter, like jewels, like tears
that sparkle the face of the princess.
Robert King, a past contributor to BPR, had work recently in The Missouri Review. His fifth chapbook, What It Was Like, appeared from Small Poetry Press in 2003.
