Her body squat, solid, thick,
a Three Pigs’ house of brick,
Lissa leaned heavily against me
flute thin
taller by a head
both of us, seventeen,
the pair of us a listing ship
as I steered her
down steep hills
cobbled streets
to local doctor
then translated
English to Spanish
Spanish back to English.
Recovering quickly,
she was blithe,
said she’d forgotten to
give herself her insulin.
The locals:
servants scurrying
to early mass at
Church of the Nuns,
its spire, high enough to
pierce a cloud.
and Raimundo, an American,
who said he’d performed
in Chicago, guerrilla theater
and why doubt him
who everyone except
much younger non-locals
who he shared his stash with,
thought he was a narc,
and Jan, who,
even with that scar
running halfway down her face
was beautiful so you’d notice,
who I badly wished I could ask,
how?
Memory lifts, a scrim:
Lissa, from Los Angles Valley
before Valley Girl was a thing
and I, from the East Coast,
went out each night
to local discotheque, La Fragua,
she, to watch her American
boyfriend lead his rock band
from his wheelchair,
gnarled body
a vine snaking up a banyan,
me,
to watch my almost-boyfriend
Fernando, the Mexican drummer,
who I hadn’t thought of
for fifty years, until now
in service of this poem,
the crowd, mostly American
and a sprinkling of locals
who met each day in the
French-inspired wrought iron-
adorned jardin.
Lissa and I had little in common.
Other than an apartment
partially subsidized by her father
and my favorite Superman tee shirt
which she either borrowed without
asking or took.
Back home, my last year of
high school
no longer thin
I hid a row of eight
Mister Chips Chocolate cookies
under my pillow each day
ate them at night,
pined for my Mexican life.
The following summer
Lissa and I shared an
apartment in Los Angeles.
Part-time we made rubber stamps,
the glue, pungent
redolent of commerce.
Stamps trumpeting
in double legged capital letters
Net 10/30
High priority
Rush
Thank you for your
continued patronage,
Then, there was fewer
of everything
except war.
We were paid minimum wage
or possibly a tad more —
the owner was her
father,
a summer job for me
soon due back East,
college.
Fans whirred
fanning our
productivity.
A dry hot LA summer
superior to torpid
New York ones
or so I was told
by the locals.
Hellacious hot.
Lissa and I lost touch.
But this past summer
I thought of her, googled.
Dead at twenty eight,
cause unknown to me.
I felt sad
for her mostly un-lived life.
For years I pined for my lost
Superman tee.
