1918-1987

I.
Her father dyed her brown hair black to look more Latin
for the Vaudeville show— cascades of curls fell down
her back.

He taught how her feet must follow, hand must rest
unconscious on his shoulder, her wrist in his firm—
fleshy palm.

At thirteen, with her wings uncertain— clipped—
acting twenty times a week. An hour glass encased
in his arms, she felt vague music drift inside her—

Silent as the wind moves the sand.

II.
A husband bleached her smoky locks to make an
All-American pinup queen. She let that auto salesman
sign her— seven years making pictures at Columbia.

Then the war-swept world called for a moon goddess
to walk the earth. And oh! How the curve of her shape
that ardent inverted S met the need!

She knelt, a paper doll on satin sheets— porcelain hips
suspended in the filmy air. Fingernails— the color of
ripe beef, traced folds of creamy satin on a thigh.

A black lace bodice could expand to raise one shoulder high—
a greeting to a man. Though glued with photographic gloss,
the chiseled lips were shy—

Through those almond eyes—electric light, shone sunset
through chipped crystal. A glamour figure— bombast—
chest above the tiny feet— in spike heels.

Her sweet tractable image pasted on a nuclear
warhead. Eyebrows plucked as clean as the wings
of a poached hen. She might have flown.

Instead she fell.

III.
After the blast, her hair thinned— ends split, turned
silver, her marriages broken one by one. Children
appeared— kept her from the movies.

Photographers captured her— disheveled disruptive on
transatlantic flights. She failed learning lines—
gave up walking— took up shuffling— agitated pacing.

The doctors saw plaques and tangles in her brain. At the end,
a wheelchair took her from bed to shower— arms and legs
upheld. Head tipped back— vacant eyes looked the same.

Unable to talk or swallow, she felt more comfortable that way.