BARBARA REIHER-MEYERS

THE POWER OF PERSONA

If he had more teeth, I’d marry him,

just for the way he transforms

from New York nasal

to Hamlet level when on stage.

His failed actor slump

becomes a strut beneath the kliegs,

and speech more pure than baby’s breath

flows from out his mouth

to fill the room with fantasy.

It doesn’t matter that he’s black

and I lean more toward pink.

It’s the lack of teeth that bothers me

and why he let them go.

 Barbara Reiher-Meyers is an award winning Long Island, New York poet, and Long Island Poetry Collective. She has been a featured reader for Performance Poets, the Live Poets Society, Island Poets, and the Long Island Poetry Collective. She curates the Long Island calendar for www.poetz.com , and sends a weekly Email of events to over 300 Long Island poets. Barbara has facilitated monthly workshops and organizes the annual poetry contest for the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society. The Long Island Quarterly, Performance Poets anthology, The American Dissident, and several other publications have published her poetry. “Sounds Familiar” is the title of her first book of poems.