ON FINDING A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND IN AN ANTIQUES SHOP
Ferlinghetti, you were my first—
the first book of poems I ever bought
forking over
cash earned swirling soft serve
into cones, squirting
ketchup peace signs onto burgers at the DQ.
Back when almost
every sunset above the kitchen sink
in the wounded wilderness of Omaha, Nebraska
occasioned a rebirth of wonder
even as the war plowed graves
for guys who could’ve been my boyfriends,
my friends and I donning black
armbands and occupying our high
school’s center staircase singing
We Shall Overcome back when
my first French kiss was startling and sweet as a surrealist
treat from your pennycandystore beyond the El
and I wanted to be your girlfriend
to leap
from one
line to the next
till I joined you and your wild pals
in San Francisco—the purely naked young virgin
ignored by the crowd watching the erection
of the St. Francis statue
and singing to herself
to the syncopated
clickety-clackety rhythm of typewriter keys
in my basement bedroom in the ‘60s suburbs.
Somewhere in the next five decades I misplaced
your circus of the soul,
its phallic towers lit like Xmas on the cover
maybe during the wild hot ride of child-birth or
skedaddling from one hapless marriage to another.
So, I’m walking down these aisles
of what-once-was—the abandoned and the tawdry—
a kewpie doll won by some boy for his girlfriend
missing most of her carnival feathers; a pressed lead Indian minus
the horse his curved legs once embraced, an engagement
ring whose diamond is rheumy as ancient eyes
but here you are for two bucks and in great shape for your age
glowing like a renaissance of wonder
like the absurd,
arcane belief I came here for a reason.
—from Poets Respond
February 28, 2021
__________
Judith Sornberger: “This poem is written in response to learning of the late great poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s death this week. The first book of poetry I ever bought was his A Coney Island of the Mind when I was a teenager. Learning of his death reminded me of finding—a few months ago—a copy of that book in an antiques store.” (web)
