LOOKING AT THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF MARILYN MONROE
Coroners have skinned the face off Marilyn Monroe
and laid it back for one last shoot. They said:
“The facial discoloration occurred after death,
and it is the surgeon’s knife that caused her face to sag.
Before the procedure the lifeless Marilyn remained beautiful.”
But she knew beauty is death. They both
knew it, Marilyn and Norma Jean – for that’s
the woman in the photograph – the face of an ancient child.
Marilyn made beauty up out of what scares us.
She told us just what to expect.
We thought we owned her when she laid
the year out naked on red velvet.
But the itch we felt was dry finger-bones
flicking our balls till they’re dust and no trouble.
Every loss of love adds up at last to one.
She worked to make herself a memory:
the careful mask of red and pink that took
her hours every day, her late arrivals on the set,
the way she listened for what no one else could hear.
Here, her face takes back earth’s colors,
the change too fast for any word but death.
Doctors have smoothed the skin
and clicked and flashed
to get her down once more, forever,
but she’s gone home to Norma Jean,
who waited for years
in parks and soda counters,
sitting on busstop benches,
nested shopping bags at her feet,
her eyes pieces of sky
open to anything.