1958 or So
It was just Billie and Frank and Mal Waldron and me
at the Five Spot having cocktails together.
This was before Billie died and Frank wrote
his famous poem about her, before Frank
was killed on Fire Island and poems
were written about him, his improbable death,
not the kind that took Billie who knew she was living
on borrowed time like a ghost or a guest
in someone’s gilded mansion. But this was still
1958 or so & we were young and happy
& when Billie grabbed the mic the place lit up
and Frank, as usual, was taking notes
while Mal banged out the melody on the keys
and Billie—well, you know exactly what she was like.
.
No Gold, Few Jewels
I dreamed The Crown had merged with The Brady Bunch
and Florence Henderson was the Queen of England.
Instead of Scottish castles and English palaces
the family lived in a split-level home in suburban
Los Angeles, ate pork chops and guzzled Kool-Aid
and had a cookout every Saturday. Prince Philip mowed
his own lawn, Elizabeth pruned her own roses
and each of the children had their little tasks to do
around the house. It was a pretty normal life—
no gold, few jewels. On Friday nights Her Royal Highness
would strap on a long double-strung faux pearl necklace
and a pair of dangly earrings over her polyester
pants suit, and she and the Duke of Edinburgh would take
the family station wagon and drive out to Friendly’s
for date night, just the two of them and a hot fudge sundae.
© Marc Alan Di Martino
Marc Alan Di Martino’s books include Day Lasts Forever: Selected Poems of Mario dell’Arco (World Poetry, 2024—longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation), Love Poem with Pomegranate (Ghost City, 2023), Still Life with City (Pski’s Porch, 2022) and Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His poems and translations appear in Apple Valley Review, Bad Lilies, The Shore and elsewhere. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, he is a reader for Baltimore Review. He lives in Italy.
The Loch Raven Review 