Piggott Porkins  
by Alice M. Roelke

Piggott Porkins
a man with an edge
living down his name
he travels to the past
fetches whatever you want
(grass clippings from the perfect summer day,
dandelions now long dried away
raspberries
from the year you were born)
for a price
and the days off his life that it costs
he'll bring you the dew from Mt. Hermon
he'll sell you Eau de Cleopatra
and make you queen for a day
with spices of infamous Mary
leeks from the Nile
or possibly crocodile
he'll send them all your way
daydreams powdered to sniff--
prices -- exorbitant per whiff
If you can pay, Piggott'll find a way
to bring you your remembered fun
But a funny thing happens one day
when Piggott returns in a pond
(his machinery off course
he fell on a horse,
which bucked him into the bay)
His makeup washed off
revealing fresh-faced
Piggott Porkins:
His time travel's a joke
a superior hoax
(he's all along been using transporters)
For selling ephemerals in the places of promises
and daydreams perverted by farce
Piggott will stay
in a jail, far away
doing time without his machinery
Chicanery pays (for a time, for some days)
but now Piggott pays
for his crimes many days
and holds out for a job in the mortuary

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