Frog Shopping on Clown St

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Written by Priscilla Wong

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He walks those polished streets like a stranger in borrowed skin, red soles clicking against concrete that don't know his name. The dark KKKs, they're his people now - or so he tells himself, scratching at that acceptance like a dog at fleas. His chest hairs peek through silk blouses worth a field worker's month, and the deformations on his face catch shadows under department store lights.

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Fancy shoes can't hide what he is, just like cologne can't mask fear. He's a frog who learned to walk upright, pretending he hasn't got a single wart, pretending the silk purse wasn't sewn from a sow's ear.

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The toads on Clown Street, they see him coming. They smile their toad smiles and take his money, but they know. How they know. He's as cold as drought in a swamp, as out of place as a pearl in pig slop. But he keeps coming back, day after day, maybe if he spends enough green, he'll stop being green himself.

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But there is no amount of shopping going change who's there. There is no designer label going cover up the slime. He's just another frog on Clown Street, hopping from store to store, trying to buy himself a different life. But when the sun sets and the shops close their doors, he's still just a frog, and Clown Street's still just Clown Street, and all the pretty things are just pretty things, gathering dust in a empty house.