Editor’s Note: For six years running, contributing author Zach Adler has spent the month of April putting out a poem a day. By turns earnest and wry, these poems are based on prompts (and often forms) chosen at random using a deck of cards. The prompts range from “The Grandfather Paradox” to “Emotional Adultery” to “White Person Dreadlocks”. This year we decided to turn all his entertainment-related National Poetry Month entries into a series of our own. 

Follow the rest of Zach’s daily poems and plumb the archives on his blog. 

King of Hearts – Yellow Kings

The Honorable Rev. Billy Lee Tuttle in His Chambers

He is smiling with teeth

Even with the glad-handing

And the sermon done

The man does not stop smiling

Thinking of the Place of Skulls

Of iron uniting flesh, wood, and bone

He catches the mirror’s reflection

A face made of clay

Eyes still and yellow

Smile painted wide

He moves to take off this mask but

He wears no mask