Yellow Mama E zine

Museum of Ugly People

by Zvi A. Sesling

        The call came on December 30. It was during dinner and I was in the middle of a steak. The call was from TV reporter Camilla Davis who specialized in quirky stories. You know, the kind that features a woman having dinner with a monkey. A man who trains dogs to carry bags of groceries for invalid people. 
        Her call was a surprise because I never thought a reporter would be interested in my curation of a museum. 
        But, of course, the museum I curate is The Museum of Ugly People and Camilla Davis wanted to feature it on her Channel 9 segment, Would You Believe!
        It did not take much for her to convince me to allow her and her camera crew to film her three-minute piece that actually took almost twenty minutes to do.
        The TV station reporter came to my office and asked if I really am the curator of the Museum of Ugly People.
        “That I am,” I told her. “The Dorian Grays of the world are a rotating exhibit of politicians, liars, cheaters, murderers, drug addicts, dictators, drunks, abusers, shrews, and even some neighbors or friends.
        “They grow uglier each day with each sin, no remorse, no hope for redemption, no beauty in the mirror, no steak on the plate, just a continuing stream of foul deeds, foul words, a stench rising like the poor, the dead, broken fossils to be forgotten.”
        “Why this?” the reporter asked.
        “Well, people are tired of beauty. How many times can you look at Marilyn Monroe’s Lips or even the Mona Lisa?
        “Some people go to the Louvre every day to see the Mona Lisa,” Camilla Davis said with certain seriousness.
        “All fools,” I say, “these portraits are far more interesting, I mean, look at Al Capone or Joseph Stalin over there. Mao Zedong or Bonnie and Clyde.  People stand in front of those portraits for hours.”
        She stood there staring at the portraits, so I added, “It teaches people that these foul people are not the heroes portrayed on TV or the movies. “I mean, look at Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; they aren’t exactly Paul Newman and Robert Redford, are they?”
        “Well, no, I guess not.”
        “That’s the point. These are not folk heroes, they are bad. And I hope you report it like that.”
        “Yah. I guess I’ll write up your point of view.”
        “That’s all I can ask for.”
        Before leaving, the reporter took a picture of me standing in front of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  
         Hope it makes me look good.

    
     Zvi A. Sesling, Brookline, MA Poet Laureate (2017-2020), has published poems and flash fiction and won international prizes. A five-time poetry Pushcart Prize nominee, his flash fiction books are Secret Behind The Gate. and Wheels. His story “Chili Man” is Pushcart nominated. Sesling’s Selected and New Poetry and his short stories Infidelities are forthcoming. He and his wife Susan J. Dechter live in Brookline, Massachusetts.

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     Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Ángeles. His artwork has appeared over the years in Medusa’s Kitchen, Nerve Cowboy, The Dope Fiend Daily, and Rogue Wolf Press, Venus in Scorpio Poetry E-Zine.