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J O H N L E N N O N ’ S L I P S Are you John Lennon? In the hour of vindication, the least obvious question. Are you still you? The ambulance attendant sways back and forth holding a spray of tubes and ready oxygen above the bleeding answer because our conveyance is artless in its speeding dispatch, and traffic, even at the hour of death, remains heavy. The heart turns over. The heart starts ruining itself all over again for love. There are stories we can’t believe no matter how many times we tell them to ourselves. John Lennon’s upper lip is fine and thinner than you might think. Young, unmurdered in memory (a redundancy for the middle-aged: young means “unmurdered,” here, also “nearsighted without his glasses”), he has a habit of pressing his lips together in a private, half-sexual joke of high treason  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:44 PM Page 79 before he brings his mouth down to his harmonica, laughing, the cleverest smartass in a room full of smartasses, or beats at the old Rickenbacker, sometimes thrusting just his tongue-tip between closed teeth for a second, then smiling with the delicate overbite of an ingénue both shy and cruel in her inviolable beauty. The last answer on earth should always be yes. Yes. No. We’ll see.  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:44 PM Page 80 ...

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