“In my time I’ve scrambled many a commandment, upended many a statue,
but I’ve never been a kept woman! You can lay to that, Long John Silver!”
— Tallulah Bankhead
A woman in my workshop
Once told me that the way in which
I had adopted you & Al Copeland
For my poetry was convenient
But not true that I had made you
My own that in my work you were not
Yourself & you weren’t (all of this
From someone who writes to Elvis Presley
But let’s not stir the man from his Graceland
Let’s not crucify the crucifying besides)
She was right I had not invited you
To my pity party no RSVP
I had swindled you in with whiskey hatched
You in drops of my own dark water
Demons & so it seemed more legitimate
Than lie I thought you wouldn’t mind
Of course I don’t know you
But neither do the others
Who lilt your name among their acres
Because Tallulah you are sure fire
Fantasy scandal up & down
Woman hardly known
But famous for cartwheeling
Through her own pity parties
(See we can commiserate)
Seems you’d call in your minions
Late night to hold your hand
Through your own dark water
Terrors & were they convenient
But not true & that’s why like
All other things in America
We wanted to burn you up
Nail you down we needed
To bleed you punish you
For our own puny problems
Yet bless your heart we made you
Our baritone swan I keep seeing it
Happen to women we puff your names
From our lips not letting you breathe
A breath not yours we steal you
To give us back our own joke of a life
Tallulah you must know what it is
To be this country’s pillow
Sham what it is to have your name
In lights & then be quickly
Lit into we want you wild
& breaking our rules while we say no-
No we are your keeper
So we rinse you of our dirty habits
In tabloid Tide & dream you more
Innocent than our children
Than our search history
The media has gotten worse
Your words would have ruled
Twitter but you wouldn’t have been able
To dodge the swinging hammers
& I bet you were dodgy as a child
I was too that’s why I am still
Outwitting the neighbors
Why I go back to this woman
In my workshop how she was
Pumped up with pomp
Taking me for her own
Convenient but not true
She who didn’t want me
To have you no one ever did
Tallulah you are not mine
As you were not yours
No matter what Southern Belle
Hell we both escaped the boundaries are
Still written where is your voice
& where is the river that sings
Of their Tallulah Bankhead
I know they tried to shut you up
They tried with me too
All those church bells
Tallulah I don’t want to keep
You I want to conspire Pssst!
Let them think we are listening
Let them think we are
Crawling back to their pity party
No RSVP you & I damsels in dark
Water distress convenient
But not true let them make
A place for us next to them
Let them see our hands
Fondling the albums
Of fond memory
Then let them hear us
Slam the door as we leave
To curdle the night with monologues,
War cries and filibusters
Let them watch as we confetti
The hymnals let them cringe
As we crush all the hickory nuts
In their bellyaching backyards
Note: The italics in the third-to-last stanza language come from “Exercise on the Trapeze,” the opening chapter of Tallulah Bankhead’s autobiography Tallulah.
