The Cost of Advertising, by Sarah Carleton

Advertisement for Myers Gloves, by Margaret Watkins (Canada), 1920s.

The Cost of Advertising

Not for a drop-waist brocade dress,
a jeweled bracelet, a crystal wineglass, 
and layers of hand-embroidered texture,

not for a fresh new vote 
or a woven hat two feet in diameter 
flung off in favour of a cloche with a cheek curl peeking out,

not for a memory of “In the Good Old Summertime” 
mixed with a premonition of “Dinah,” 
not for a glimpse of Duke Ellington or all the tea in China--

not for all the moonshine in the speakeasy 
would I step into a time machine 
and crank the brass knob to the 1920s

to end up where long cigarettes dangle like pens 
from women’s fingers and where the free spirited 
spend their final days wheezing.

Sarah Carleton
​
Sarah Carleton writes, edits, plays the banjo and raises her son in Tampa, Florida. Her poems have appeared in Houseboat, Burning Word, Avatar Review, Poetry Quarterly, Bijou, Off the Coast, Shark Reef, Wild Violet Magazine, The Binnacle, The Homestead Review, Cider Press Review, Nimrod, Silver Birch, Ekphrastic, Chattahoochee Review, Sow’s Ear, Kindred and Spillway.