Preen ever in her, ever over her. Let her rise

on TV to violins: alive ever

as a hanker, a slip of spin, prism of skin

to enliven lovers, liars, to revile time.

Here’s a little lay for that Never-

Has-Been, Ever-Has-Been, Nation’s Stain: here’s

a thin ankh beaten in tin. O Mae, O Mother, O Rival—

Ain’t no sin.

Envoi

ENVOI

Every mother is arrival. Ain’t no sin seeking

out the Nevers that preserve her as a tangle

in the daughter, each woman lost inside

a reputation turning her from angel

to alien, picked to pieces inside a scatter of hails.

Mae, you were an ace at stitching into armor

all our changeable faces: reveling in an image

of a self too swift to be pinned, too divine

to be anything but institution. Too cool,

too collectible, your act’s become too hard

to follow. The crowd’s been had by inventory:

a slip of blond, a gemmed word that swivels. You’re me,

we say. She’s us. We’re zero. Our grave girl now, you

ever nod. Still turnip-hipped. And vague as fog.

III

III

W.C. Fields Takes a Walk

W.C. FIELDS TAKES A WALK

Alone, I march with my ruined mouth, plaid vest

stinking of whiskey. Alone, with my little vial of pain

rattling at my leg. People want me

to say something funny and I tell them, Only privacy

amuses me. You want funny, break a bone

and sing through it. That’s my nameplate,

calling card: fat man, drunkard, turnip-

face: rage’s endless, hectoring joke.

Fans pretend they can’t believe it, insist

it’s all a game: they call me Santa

in the gossip pages, they call me Naughty

Chickadee. But it’s the lion they like,

roaring and bleeding, their timid fists

rapping at my cage. Fame

means accepting you can be only one story.

I like to stand backstage, jeering at the coal-

scrubbed comics who won’t make it, laughing

at their quivering cheeks, their still-

white mouths, and shout,

You don’t believe it! The vaudeville girls,

I thought they’d get it, with their champagne

curls, breasts leoparded with sequins. But too soon

they slip offstage to wipe the grease

paint off, unpin their dresses, kiss their kids,

and let their figures go. They’re tired,

they say. After all those shows. Tired women, tired

like my mother with her German cheekbones,

papery and yellow. At the stores, she could barely

rouse herself to act Camille half the time,

the other half like Garbo. While at home

she never knew what to be, wringing her hands

by the kitchen stove, too sensitive, she said,

to the sad slow beat of my heels

drumming on the carpet. She said

she wanted life to be something realer

for herself. Me, I can walk a mile with a nail in my boot

and a smile on my face. I can walk