For Elise
"South Imagined"

american woman is what he says,
what he sings--from new orleans,
and maybe from cali
fornia
or just maybe from
flori
da,

steam rising in the cliche,
in a diaphanous white
dress, on the porch
with a hound dog,
and the sun is up,
been awake for ages
and the parched
floor-boards, with
a swing, rusty blue,
like a photo from
the fed project
of the thirties,
and there has got to be
a bottle of bourbon
next to her, three-quarters
finished, and she has a
kind of twang that tastes
of the deep south,
chicken fries,
and she pats her dog,
and says "he'll come back"
and go for the long shot
to get in the house and
the guitar
standing against the wall
and there's blues in this
place,
she fans herself
with a magazine,
a National Geographic
with a photo of the
Antartic
her legs
dangling over desire,
then cut to the
guy, with crew-cut, in
a Fifties classic, Julie London
sings "cry me a river"
from the girl can't help it,
and the car crashes into a tree
this being the basis of poetry
and then return
to her,
on the porch, solitary,
the sweat pouring off the lens,
and in comes a guy with glasses
in a grey suit, the harmonica
hums his arrival, and the gator
similes, pile up thick,
"you there"
"yes"
"he isn't comin'"
"he will"
and the steam issues a declaration
that it is hotter than a gator's
stomach in july,
or is it august,
"but mary-allen, you know that ain't
true"
now there is a close-up of this guy
who behind those thick-rimmed glasses
is the purest
hunk known to mankind
back to m-a who is on the swing,
up and down goes those television
cum movie images of her, the american
woman, and the hound dog barks once
and lies down, his beige form found on
calendars advertising the collectibles
and now the camera swings
over to the tree, where the car is mangled
and the guy is is a mess, his head like a
pile of gator intestibles,
and then back to m-a to a thigh which is damp
with the viewer's expectation
and someone who has read feminist
theory takes hold of the pan handle
if you can forgive the intrusive phallicist
image and pulls it to right of center
where dolls in blue and white dresses dangle
each one with a frown stitched in red,
"i suppose you will be wantin' a drink"
"well mary-allen, that is unfair, you
know that it is mighty cruel, you know
I never touch liquor, and never will"
and maybe he is a fundamentalist
or just plain wallpaper baptist
she looks at him, camera zooms in
for a close-up of those blue-gray eyes
"you don't know what you have been missin'
all these years, why on an afternoon like
this, a drink, well it has to be perfectly
divine"
and you begin, to sense that her accent isn't
quite right, it is a fake one, she's from the
North, New York, maybe from the East
from Berkley, or even, imagine this, from
England, she has the unsettled accent of
a soap star in between jobs, and it sounds
like Liz Taylor that line, from a Tennesee
William's play, and the hound dog, his nails are
I swear, are manicured, the guy with the thick rimmed
glasses, well he is from ER or from Chicago Hope or
from a cop show, can't quite figure where, that's
who he is, the I can't quite figure where guy, from
a television distopia,
and tell me, who these days drinks that brand of bourbon?
but I want to hear "cry me a river" by miss julie london
now that's classy, but they won't, play it here,
he sits down alongside her and it is revealed he is a
lawyer, and it is one of these investigatin' dramas
like, I say like, because I don't want to be sued, like
a John Grisham, and the steam is comin' off the bronze
rails, like that off a locomotive that has been joggin,
"you goin' tell me why it happened"
"what you talking about, you are always riddling me boy"
and now though it is the wrong country and the wrong state
you think of those relationships between the heroes
and heroines in william faulkner novels, if you don't
you should cos the script writing team did when they
discussed the plot in Mister Donuts, or was it elsewhere,
"we want incest in here, we want those dolls to be
symbolic of an incestrous relationship, and way late
into the movie, we want the I can't figure where guy
to reveal it to mary-allen, and the guy in the car is
of course her brother, and remind me to get that dogs'
balls pushed in, on an account it might detract from
the story-line. And before I forget, there is a glaring
omission, what do we do with the race question?
should we have them as police inspectors, and
that way provide a positive image, or should we
go for a gritty presentation of true life now,
talk guys, ideas, I want ideas, not spilled coffee
So we are agreed, the best friend of Mary-Allen
is black, and the judge is black, and the bad guys
are white, ninety percent, ten percent black,
couldn't we bring some nasty nazi looking German
that would resolve everything, someone like Jeremy Irons,
or maybe some A-rab? but we might lose something of that
authenticity, I'll have another chocolate old fashioned miss."





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