right hand pointing

L. E. McCullough
 

ROMANCE TYPE POEM FOR MADEMOISELLE DEVEREAUX    

Not real sure if this is a regular romance type poem
 with the right kind of regular romance type words and style

All I know is—

After leaving you I got in my rig and drove forty-two miles
     through a silverthaw gullywasher with traces of hail and neon
       past Caribou, Presque Isle, Mars Hill and Bridgewater
          and the all-nite contra at The Rockin’ M
             with Wilfred Cormier & His Millinocket Playboys

             Halfway almost to Mattawamkeag and the Springfield cutoff
         before my arms shook loose from the steering wheel’s shuddering embrace
       and my mouth finally stopped kissing the ice-flecked fog wisps
   teasing my cheeks like moist dancing fingers
and lingering loon sighs

Then this morning at Lil’ Toots Lucky 7 Spot on 31— 

   after scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy
and three cups of bad, bad coffee—

The only thing I could taste was you.

CLUB LIDO, KANSAS CITY, 1944

In this crumbling black-and-grey photograph my parents smile at each other
Across a cozy corner table at the Club Lido in Kansas City, 1944
Two Norman Rockwell sweethearts holding hands and sipping cherry sodas
Like Adolf Hitler was some goofball sidekick on the Jack Benny Comedy Hour

My father wears his officer uniform and a fresh army haircut
Grins adoringly at my mother, whose dark, snood-bound hair spills in lush waves
Across bare slender shoulders arched in a Rita Hayworth pinup pose

 I want to step into that photograph and walk up to their table
And tell them about the new world coming round the corner like a rocket

About Hiroshima, hula hoops, Howdy Doody and the blacklist
About JFK, SDS, cocaine babies, call waiting, Agent Orange and microwaves
About diet coke and Chernobyl, tie-dyes and Elvis, one step for mankind
Wheel of Fortune, glasnost and Star Wars

And about all the hurt and pain they’ll suffer as a matter of course
From the children they dare to bring into this world

Mostly I want to ask just how they can sit there and smile
And be so sure they’ll still be smiling at each other this way
Sixty years later

When they don’t even know Lil’ Bow-Wow’s last name
Or the price of cherry sodas in the Year of the Wi-Fi

MUSIC OF YOUR LIFE

 Lowell George croons
“I will be your Dixie chicken
if you’ll be my Tennessee lamb”

on the all-nite oldies station as I fluff a pillow next to my wife
and watch tears spurt from her crumpling face
as she leafs through a Canadian literary magazine

she picked up this afternoon at a yard sale after Twelve Step
because of the neo-Warhol cover and learns on page number 9
that her college roommate was killed 3 years ago for 5 dollars

in a Chicago parking garage and the man who wrote the poem
still dreams about her and my wife
dancing together at the Stones show after Kent State

and right then all I could do was pull the covers
over my head and wish the goddam radio
would just blow a fuse and shut Miss American Pie

 up for good cause flashbacks
burn baby
burn baby

bu—