Unwilling to eat pizza again,
bored by the lovely boy
who had never read a book,
browsing in the library
instead of going home,
she was an Evian apple ripe
for the honor of being picked.
A white-haired gentleman,
immaculately dressed, approached
her, certain that he knew her.
“Paloma mia, I thought I would
never see you again. I’ve grown
old, but you look as young
as you ever did. You don’t
owe me as much as a smile,
even so, I beg your forgiveness.
Let’s eat where we always ate.”
At the restaurant, the waiter
appeared, and the gentleman said, “She
wants the strip steak, medium rare,
Caesar salad, dressing on the side,
new potatoes boiled in the skin.
For me, the usual—and champagne.”
The gentleman looked at her and sighed,
“Is your favorite still Shakespeare’s
sonnet about old age?” She nodded,
and he spoke the entire poem
about “the bare ruined choir”
in a baritone that sang
like the wind in the tallest pines.
The next morning she slipped
into her dress and departed.
He was still asleep, or she
might have asked him to tell
her his name and the story
of his long-lost love.
—From Half-Blind Mirror, published by TMO: The Neighborhood Office,
in Helena, Montana (2012)
Seeley, a memory from the fifth grade,
spoke to me twice. Held back a year,
she sat staring out the dirty window.
She was left-handed, and the fact
that the teacher was left-handed
and had learned to write
with her right hand, did not impress Seeley.
She turned around, with the teacher
at her desk, and used bad words
to tell me that her welfare
worker was shipping her to Anson,
a town twenty miles down a gravel
road from where we sat. The teacher
took her hand to lead her to the woman
smiling by the door. Seeley nipped off
my pencil as she passed my desk.
The summer that I was growing
an inch a month, the pitch man,
in a black top hat and a red
jacket with tails, demanded
my attention. “For a thin dime and your soul:
you will see heavenly sights. Mademoiselle
Mimi, world famous exotic dancer,
a direct descendant of Queen
Nephratiti, appearing for one
night only in a performance
from Ancient Egypt.” The Horned
Beast himself seized my elbow. He knew
I had a coin reserved for cotton
candy. I paid my dime
and followed college boys
into a tent lit by kerosene
lamps with untrimmed wicks.
Mademoiselle Mimi started a five-tone record,
removed her sky-blue robe, and presented herself:
in all her glory, every unstitched inch of her,
all new to me, and danced a bare three minutes
on a dirt-floor stage, two arm-lengths away,
lighting up the desert between us
like a burning bush. A college boy asked,
“Is that all?” Mademoiselle said,
“What more did you come to see?
Shall I kick off my shoes?” The college
boys left, laughing at their friend.
Mademoiselle startled me when
she walked over, her high-hung fruit
as firm as the apple on Eve’s tree,
and called me by name. Her avid
gnawing on her ragged
fingernails retrieved a memory.
Seeley it was, from the fifth grade.
“Nothing much in Anson
but farm boys and churches,
no soda fountain, movie house
closed down after showing
‘Gone with the Wind.’ When
I left Anson two days ago,
no one waved, not even a finger.”
I retreated, numbed and dumbed
by the dazzle and the dark.
—From Half-Blind Mirror, published by TMO: The Neighborhood Office,
in Helena, Montana (2012)
was born in 1923, the sixth of eight children who survived the Great Depression.
When he was 19 he was drafted into the U.S. Army and fought in the Battle of the
Bulge. As a result of his war experiences he became a pacifist. He attended college
on the G.I. Bill, taught school for eleven years, worked as a methods engineer,
did social work and auditing for the County of Los Angeles for 15 years, retired
and built houses.
Lovelady and his wife were married in 1949, have four children, six grandchildren,
and two great-grandchildren, and have been married for 62 years.