My Friends and I Wanted to be Movie Stars.
Big and strong, blonde and sexy. Rich and famous with new,
made-up names.
Hollywood was a way out of the Mid-West. We saved allowance
money. We mowed lawns.
We’d travel like hobos, only cleaner. Sneaking out of the boxcar
at Union Station or at the sight of the first orange.
We’d sleep outside under a special moon. Fruit would fall on us.
like a bunch of Isaac Newtons.
That sounded so great maybe we’d just stay and not be stars.
Co-stars, maybe. Or daredevil stuntmen.
But we’d be where things happened. Nothing happened
in the Mid-West except everybody died every night.
Maybe we’d be like Hollywood pets. Pampered, stroked, fed
by hand, loved in ways completely foreign to us.
Doris Day Parking
I’m at the bar with a view of the crowded
street when a spot opens up right in front
and a sporty car slides right in.
A friend of mine calls that Doris Day parking:
in her movies, there’s always a space for Doris
when it counts.
Both my wives loved Doris Day, so I know
she was born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff.
I know about her marriage to Al Jorden
the jealous trombonist and later to Martin
Melchner who spent every penny she earned.
In that way she was like everybody else:
mistakes in love and money. Wishful thinking.
But she was not like everybody else.
While the story of my life rolls on, the stories
in her life pause while she sings.
After that she has to hurry -- fall into Rock
Hudson’s arms at last, rescue her son
from kidnappers. And she always gets
everywhere in the nick of time
because she never has to circle the block looking
for a parking spot or sit with her flashers
on while drivers behind her wait and fume.
The Cat Who Doesn’t Like Anybody But My Wife Lolls in Ezra Pound’s Lap.
In the 50s, pianists named Ferrante and Teicher
sat at twin pianos. My mother and her sisters
swooned as twenty fingers ran up and down
the keyboard and they
pictured the falling leaves that stand for time
passing, for aging and death.
I find “Autumn Leaves” on YouTube and play it.
Sure enough. It all comes back -- the ash trays,
the coffee cups, the tears.
Ezra strokes his beard, then the cat. “That had
nothing to do with death, Stupid. Those ladies
were wondering
what it would be like to have twenty sensitive fingers
running up and down their heavy, neglected bodies.
“That’s why I keep saying ‘Make it new!’ But you
like to muck around in the past.
“By the way, I love this cat. I’m taking him with me
when I go.”
