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)