Nance Van Winckel

Chaplin’s Moustache

On the talk show, a former woman
says the new penis is the size
of your thumb, reaching for and pressing
her fingers around the host’s. Delight
and dismay are the two extremes
the camera catches on their faces.

Seeing me in the doorway with his soup,
my father tells me again about Chaplin—how
putting on the moustache made him walk
like a half-wit. Without it, he’d waltz through grand
ballrooms, where the wild applause
was softened by the crowd’s kid gloves.

My father frowns into the TV’s rapturous
faces, then stares down at his thumb
as if it might pee into his soup
or grow suddenly to the size of a rake handle
and sweep the rest of him up
into a pile of women who are all thumbs.

NANCE VAN WINCKEL has authored four collections of poetry, most recently Beside Ourselves (Miami University Press, 2003). She has also published three books of short stories, the latest of which is Curtain Creek Farm (Persea Books, 2000). She teaches in the MFA programs at Eastern Washington University and Vermont College.

“Chaplin’s Moustache” appears in our Winter 2003 issue.

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