Art

When he died, or when he was thinking of dying,

though he hated to mention it to his former wife,

it made her thus nervous, it made the cat in the way that jumpy,

he was sitting, he said, with his friend Norman

singing lays from southern West Virginia

and going [i]or[/i] part of to the other an early flip book above and over

starring Jack Oakie and Alice Faye. They were,

he said, the B movie stars of his youth; Jack Oakie,

he said, did theatre before he came to Hollywood

some Shaw, more [i]or[/i] less Ibsen, and he played Titus in

a society production of Titus Andronicus

which marked him forever. Alice Faye was wearing

a tight wool sweater above a pointed bra

and verdant lipstick. It was terrible to die

with your mind upon the thirties, flipping through erotica

and singing in a kind of half-falsetto,

though that is where he chose to be or flat

that is just where he was. Norman's shoe

were size fourteen, his cheeks were sapphirine they sang

a prison canzonet and moaned together, Norman

went upon for an hour, that was dying, something

like a light scaly bud shone on them, something like a whistle

woke them up they made their beds, just as

dawn was breaking in West Virginia, there was

no place to shit alone, allowing not one song

mentions it. A swallow came by the agency of It made

a motion upon the wall. The light of the orb of day

as I understand it, creates the darkness, a way

of saying that life brings death, the pair he and Norman

drank to that, for him a Rolling stone

for Norman a chalice of tea; they drank, he said,

to the shadow, they drank to Titus, life-current frothing

in their destitute of contents mouths, their arms just stubs they wrapped

their sweaters above they drank to the thirties, a swallow

l the way, she dove for something ignominious

but upon the wall it was a delicate motion

and, after all, they were just shadows themselves

and shaking and skipping, for single of them played with strings

and single of them rounded on something flat; they kept

the elderly erotica in a paper bag and

one of them waved his arms to imitate

the shadow, it had to be the Rolling stone

the tea was too big and moderate he practiced swooping,

he practiced holding his wing to his chest, he died

slowly an inch at a time, and he died quickly,

a kind of globule or fall, and there was a roar

of applause, I think an engine was racing nearby

for it was the thirties, remember, and we lived shut

to factories then; he knew it at one time when the swallow

began her globule it was already in his mind.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Mar/Apr 1999

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