Alan Albert: Two Poems

A Small Wedding

Everyone who came made an agreement to shut up when the priest pressed his hands together. It was winter when the small wedding happened. Everyone was no taller than six inches. But they were adorable, especially the outfits. The men, of course, looked like men always do. But the women had the most profoundly attractive ensembles. They’d gone to a special designer shop devoted to small women. In fact, tiny. The designer herself was only three inches high, and for her the clothes she made were like huge blankets or, for that matter, sails. But she loved color and splash and the challenge of coming up with just the right thing. It was her shop, after all. Everyone had to call ahead and make appointments for measurements and so forth. One group came in and quickly filled the shop. A cop came by and looked in because there were so many people. But he walked away quickly when he saw what was happening and the size of everyone.

The Invention of Loneliness

There were three German physicists
reportedly working on the problem
at the same time. One of them,
Krupp, came up with a way
of leaving the tears out. Another,
Russell, was beginning
to understand sweets
and their relationship
to recovering. Duncan,
the third, discovered a new
filament that would allow
a more reliable depletion
of energy. The person
actually credited with the invention
of low-cost marketing
of what we now refer to as The Big L
was Edgar Bullough,
a worker at Crythe, a small
manufacturing plant in
Wilmington. He had found a way
to affix invisible ribbons
of sadness to the newborn.

Art Information

• "Dance Floor" © Tim Baker; Creative Commons license.