Theda Bara was in the movies---
just barely out of the nickelodeon
Millay the hottest poet in town---
a war going on overseas;
walking w/ Sara beneath the gas lamps
along 5th Avenue to 291
& the new MOMA;
her smiles faint as smoke
rising from the street---horse-drawn
carriages were still the way around;
through Central Park towards
the west where farmland still thrives
beneath flesh-colored paint-coated
alabaster statues that were naughty
before Gypsy Rose Lee
& panhandling photographers
created Film Noir: Weegee, Arbus
& Adams---playing off the pioneers
of German Expressionism, Hollywood
was hot & far away (we were in the village,
I ****** her in the drafty flat---always
1000-headed Medusa comes to me
in lucid dreams; I wait for the gay 90's
to be over---walking w/ Sara,
we see the new photography
that will become nearly all Bettie---
onstage is a tempest & a blaze;
she says no time-traveling tonight---
no prophesying---just be here now w/ me,
dawning hippy lights, twelve girls
standing naked in a field w/ their
****** downtown ragtime rhythms;
Kerouac so drunk he couldn't be impressed
by knickers & ankle-boots like I was,
smitten w/ Sara's pale face & small *******;
her cheeks burning like coals
as we sat on a snowy bench
laughing at the chilly birds
flocking to the steamy warmth of her fur---
this was a holiday all our own,
no seventh fleet in sight, strings so hot, swing
already legendarily echoing from uptown
where Harlem will one day be---
but now it's chilly---let's go to Starbucks
& get a hot pink drink;
she says---oh, baby, not tonight,
I have expensive ***
we can drink as much of as we want---
we will be blinded by tomorrow
&
the war
will end soon