He was a pretty boy
Cornbread eyebrows with short navy blue shorts.
Their ends always curled upward
To the sun.

He wanted to be an actor yet,
He had never experienced
Anything but a stubbed toe, and a missed
Allowance

On account of a mistake, daddy's bank.

"I'm out of money," he whined high pitched.

"It's on the way," Father replied.

They were lost on an ocean neither could pronounce.

"Don't worry," Mother said. "We're OK."

"All I do is worry."

"Well," they cackled. "We didn't teach you that."

One evening the pretty boy was walking into an audition for a show called "White Rose". He was in bleached Levi's, rose lips, hair slicked back with 20 pounds of batteries in his pocket to make him look muscular. Before going onstage, he smiled at himself in the mirror. He dug and pushed his pointer fingers in the corner of his mouth to force it. Tears gathered in his eyes. He was happy to feel something. It made him believe he was supposed to be there, like a ticket.

"Agency?" the casting director asked as they took a sip from their paper dixie cup.

"None," the pretty boy replied.

The director raised an annoyed eyebrow. "How d'you get in here?"

He revealed a birthmark in the shape of Liza Minnelli on his right bicep. She was smoking a cigarette, a lengthy one. The smoke from it curled from the tip and floated upward soon cut by the fan.

"Life's like that," the director said.

"I have as many headshots as you need," the pretty boy suggested.

"Listen to when you're spoken to," the director said.

"What?"

"Exactly," the director said, and waved the pretty boy away.

"Oh," the casting director shuttered. "