The Day Lady Died- Frank O’Hara
It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton at 7:15
and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed meI walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger
and a malted
and buy an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets in Ghana are doing these daysI go on to the bank and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance
for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard
although I do think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres of Genet,
but I don’t,
I stick with Verlaine after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega
and then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre
and casually ask for a carton of Gauloises
and a carton of Picayunes,
and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
nd I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing