What the Legendary Do
Abbie Hoffman says “rich kids do heroin”
Springsteen plays pool with my brother
Bob Dylan snores at an A.A. meeting
Toni Morrison is a postage stamp
Liz Smith disparages my research
Grandpa Munster makes sexist remarks
Chairman Mao doesn’t brush his teeth
Stalin kisses you in the East Village
Hitler taps me at the Exxon station
John Goodman argues in a Korean deli
Muhammed Ali is anti-Semitic on TV
Winston Churchill begs FDR for help
Prince Charles sells Harry to the press
The Queen does not admit he’s her son
Noam Chomsky’s voice is inaudible
John Ashbery fact checks my article
Matt Dillon flirts in a lesbian bar
Matthew Broderick goes to McDonald’s
Eva Marie Saint cries at an interview
Ed Koch needs a chastity belt
T.S. Eliot has lunch with Groucho Marx
The famous pee in a latrine
Downsizing with Catherine Deneuve
Downsizing came
as it does in the
life of Ivan the
Terrible Wall Street
stocks, but I met
Catherine Deneuve today
at the New York Film Festival
while she and John Malkovich
did a press conference for
their famous Portuguese director
whose film left me sleeping though
I was supposed to be impressed.
Well, despite the grandiosity
and animosity at getting terminated
by an indefatigable British company
that produced medical books
and could not afford a good proofreader
(except for doctors who were very bad at this),
and had also been the procurer
of the original Gray’s Anatomy and a
current reference on the intestinal tract,
they threw me to the curb
so I might taste the salt of Manhattan tar
and use a medical text to recuperate.
Despite this cautionary Big Apple work tale,
I met her today:
The Grand Dame of French cinema
The Lesbian Queen who may not be a Lesbian
The romantic lead of all orgasms
in French movie history!
she was better than Liz Smith
or Kate Moss
or Chaim Potok—she was that
suave Parisian T-Rex with red lips—
who gave me a thirty-second stare—
directed at my ovaries and hypothalamus—
as we admonished the obscure director
whom she and John Malkovich followed
like puppy dogs—all the way to Portugal
where they met Mephistopheles and Faust—
even Mr. Goethe was given a few lines
in the flick; but it wasn’t so much
the dangerous liaisons that existed and coexisted;
no, it was the shake of her hand, the tryst
with her fingers, the sliver of her wrist, the
unquestionable beauty that she dangled;
for when Wall Street finally collapses,
there will still be a Catherine Deneuve.
Jesus and the Legos
Birds whimper
but they bite
my feet
like Jesus caught
in rosary beads
or white bricks
that stack
& form Genesis
& The Book of
Revelation
hell-bent structures
thawing what is
demonic as
Jesus sticks
bibles
in your mind &
homeless men
walk through
aisles saying Jesus
is my savior though
he is limping
while an apostle
whispers like a dove
that falls to the ground
made of
white bricks
that do not bleed.
Eleanor Levine’s writing has appeared in more than 200 publications, including Fiction, The Hollins Critic, Gertrude, Faultline, The Raleigh Review, the Notre Dame Review, and others. Her poetry collection, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria, was published by Unsolicited Press. Her short story collection, Kissing a Tree Surgeon, was published by Guernica Editions. Her novel, The Golden Kernel, was accepted by Main Street Rag Publishing.
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Heavy Feather Review 