Piece

What is a brand?

The hopeful tag

on the tan underpants

that reads “Metaphor”

leaves everything

to the imagination

which by now

is plainly exhausted.

I could describe these tags

as so many

flapping tongues,

dropping hints

about a foreign designer,

himself largely a cover story.

Someone somewhere must sew a shirt

made entirely of red flags.

Untiring, music

rises

then falls through

its imagined past.