(Abdessalem Benyahia/Pexels)

It happens every year: a dead man

is elected justice of the peace.

The jury is sequestered, each juror

having been asked “Are you now or

have you ever been a collector 

of stamps?” because the defendant

smuggled the drug money in rare

stamps from the Caribbean island

whose aged dictator appears 

on airmail issues. 

                When cigarettes are

banned in public, the dictator’s cigarette 

is air-brushed out of the picture, 

which is one way to erase the past. 

You can also change the name 

of the country, inflate the currency,

inflame the populace, and kill 

the old people who remember

the old days. 

      “You get all that from 

a set of postage stamps?” 

            Yes, though

they, too, are disappearing from our lives.

As a collectible, coins have left stamps

in the dust the way Secretariat outdistanced 

the field at the Belmont. Nevertheless, 

when the passenger beside me asks, 

“What do you do?” I like to say “I’m 

a philatelist,” and see what happens. 

David Lehman is the editor of the Oxford Book of American Poetry, the general editor of the Best American Poetry anthology series, and the author of such recent books as The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir and The Morning Line, a book of poems. He writes an occasional column on movies for the American Scholar.

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