Expensive Skeletons Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Expensive skeletons
Prance at the fair; their bones
Are tasseled with ribbons of air,

And the flute players play notes from
Their yoked eye-sockets out their dazzling muzzles,

And they canter in long ovals all a hustle,

Amorous scientists stand at their markers,
Admiring their glistening absence of muscle,

And the fine ladies up in the lees,
Whose hats are an expensive nest of taxidermed chickadees,

Cry out for the glorious good-byes,
With tickets in their hands, and hands on their thighs,

As all around them, like a show of cadavers,
The morbid gentlemen’s rimy ponies whiny and slather,

Those expensive skeletons
Prance at the fair, and their bones
Are tasseled with ribbons of air....