Auction

stiff-standing
antique figurines
are being sold
at auction

one’s an iron jockey
holding a hitching ring
clad in red and white
and blackface paint

another is 
offering cigars from a wooden hand
the old wood’s
brown through and through

people are bidding them up
for (they say) the sake of
historical preservation
and the marking of bad memory

hard to believe
the prices such things command
among people who profess
to understand the offenses they bear

it seems the privilege
of being able to buy and sell
the past
is not cheap