The Bad Mount Rushmore of Slender-Faced Men

Why did the monument I made suck?

Tried to make a Mount Rushmore

of slender-faced men

in my mind.

Whoever they were,

they had to be famous

enough for me to mentally

carve them from memory.

I got pretty far, I guess—Luke Perry

Kevin Bacon, Ethan Hawke—

three out of four etched flawlessly

into the facade of the mountain

of thought, but then

artistic indecision—

the kind that all great artists got?

Or the kind to which only fools

and losers were subject? I’m uncertain—

tripped me up as I hewed away

each fleck of cognitive granite,

making the fourth

face an ugly,

unrecognizable amalgam

of Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland,

Timothée Chalamet, and Scott Glenn.

I’m sorry, I said to myself,

tears sliding down the cheeks

in my psyche

as I stared up at it

inwardly, looming grotesquely

over the natural landscape

I hadn’t yet imagined around it.

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