97poems/jimdandy

3/12/97

I wish that I could tell LaVerne that I don’t remember Georgia Gibb at all. Oh, the name for sure, but not a thing she sang.

The way I remember LaVerne’s plaintive voice coming from my sister’s room, where she played her latest hit over and over every day.

“I Cried a Tear”… I never knew who.

She told me I had a nose like LaVerne’s. And what a nose it was. That I better not go out in a big rain. Might drown.

My sister and I never quite shared the same taste. I was never a LaVerne fan too much myself, though I recognized her for what she was.

Essence in a world preparing to lose itself. It’s hard to know what to attribute that to. Progress? Or as I often choose to complain “being terminally Caucasian.”

Back then it was smooth that was the danger. Those Pat Boone voices that eviscerated rock and roll.

These days it’s slick, a lurking menace that exceeds the boundaries of music. Glamour: A World Problem is a book I’ve meant to read for years.

I hate to think of LaVerne, her feet whacked off in her later years

And want to think she was happy there in the Philippines at the club she ran. Belting out Jim Dandy , to the rescue.

To the rescue.

To the rescue.