CHARLES HENRI FORD
this is the real
deal this is why
America was
invented this
is why the
orchestra’s
got piccolos
all tuned up
every fiddle
in the room
standing at
attention
in he walks
like freshbaked
bread something
happens it’s simple as
chemistry, some unusual
property some hypnotic gesture
some Whitmanic spectrum,
utter indifference, an
unaccountable
grace, money
in the bank,
something
not even
Picasso
could capture
what is it about
an American
smoking the
sweet pipe of
youth in Paris,
our little Rimbaud,
who knows, he knows,
we all know,
he walks into
the zinc bar and
the girls all melt, he
wipes his delicate lips,
crosses the room, sits
at the little white table
crosses his legs and
the gay young men
want to die for him
but he has got no
use for anybody
in the room only
Gertrude and Djuna
and Peggy Guggenheim
who he is the darling of,
and Hemingway can go
fuck himself now, with his
tightjaw and bickering.
read the room, Ernest,
this is what everyone
came here for, not you,
Charles Henri Ford, this
blue eyed marsupial
in a dinnerjacket,
heir to a small
Southern fortune,
young, American,
small hands,
too pretty
for his own
reflection, the
ghost of a
smile, like
smoke on
water, his rich
round rolling hips,
round as oceans,
the perfect folds in
his white linen pants
(and a monogrammed
hand-
kerchief
embroidered by a
family servant back
home in Mississippi
with the letters
CHF
protruding like
a flag of ecstasy
from
his right
rear pocket)