remembering Anne Sexton and Jack Geiger
This was the way we used to party:
lamps unplugged, shoved in the closet
rugs rolled up, furniture pushed back
Glenn Miller singles on the spindle.
There was the poet kicking off her shoes
to jitterbug with the Physician
for Social Responsibility
the only time they ever met
and he pecking his head to the beat
swinging her out on the stalk of his arm
setting all eight gores of her skirt
twirling, then hauling her in for a Fred
Astaire session of deep dips
and both of them cutting out to strut
humming along with the riffs
that punctuated “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
This was after Seoul and before Saigon.
Coke was sitll a carbonated drink
we added rum to. There was French wine
but someone had mispalced the curlicue
and a not-yet famous novelist
magicked the cork out on the hinge
of the back door to “Sunrise Serenade”
and dance was the dark enabler.
Lights off a long minute at midnight
(squeals and false moans) madcap Anne
long dead now and Jack snowily
balding who led the drive to halt the bomb
and I alone am saved to tell you
how they could jive.
from Connecting the Dots, W.W. Norton, 1996
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