1961, and: Easter Drama

1961

It was the year they coined all-you-can-eat,so when we tucked our paper napkins under our chins

bowls and platters line danced each time we saidenough already, I’m full! Suddenly we had back

talk, words to describe that but Mahhhhhhhhhh whine.And when a girl insisted she had to have Malibu Barbie,

didn’t say please, begged for the Peter Max sheets,we had a word for her now, and it was bratty. Because

a draft warranted dodging, we got draft dodger,because a war in the jungle had been smoldering

six interminable years, we got no-win. It was the yearHeinlein busted out grok, an understanding so thorough

and deep, the lonesome soul gave way to the drippy mascaraof the group, and when she did, a malapportioned nitpicker,

a sexy attendee, could write it all down in a memo,or else drown her sorrows in a microwave while gazing

at moon shots. That was the year of the walk-in,where a dishy gal didn’t need to call ahead for a shampoo

and set, a towering beehive. While Ray Charles belted out“Unchain My Heart,” we were skiddooing our skyjacks,

sleeping in, tuning out in the key of Valium, soft landingour power-broker spacecrafts, trying on permissivism.

Back then everyone was a unitarded, wheeling-and-dealingpaparazzo; it was all fab, no trade-offs, round-the-clock zazzy.

Someone said wazoo, so wazoo it was, and we were psyched,so very psyched, even while servicing our modules, even

when we were trying on our reentry shtick, sidling up,for the gillionth time, to the buffet line, loading our plates

with splashdown.

Easter Drama

Past Liquor World, past Pappy’s BBQ, a red-tailed hawkrapturously dive bombs a crow over 71B on the anniversary

of Christ’s surprise visit to the tea-time gals to whom he proclaimedin the fellowship of the kingdom there shall be neither man nor woman,

one of His many Ascension Day manifestations—puzzling, thespianlypregnant. Twenty-one centuries later, plenty of post-Maundy Broadway,

bud-bursting serviceberry, potboiler mayapple, bodice-busting lackof poke. We’re drowning in theatrics, raftless, the kids playing tag

in the grass while we search the banks for an unhistrionic patch of sand,for an adramatic rock to throw. The girl with her shirt off.

The boy without his shoes. Maybe Jesus meant we’re one and the same,interchangeable, though of course not, so Barbie/Tonka, Dora/Diego.

My brother who swore off booze the same day his Savior rosefrom the dead swears tacos linguas flex your lips, lucid your speech,

make pronouncing juego de dramatización a cinch, but I don’t cravethe stage or angst or tears, anyone’s piece of mind or tongue

or lip. What I want is vaudeville’s opposite, charge-neutral,as the coach coacher couched it, so take your one-act,

condense it down to ten minutes, then chuck it pastDon Tyson Boulevard, where they’ll grind it down

to an unassuming meal for a small defenseless pet.