The Paris Poems

by Suzanne Burns

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York

The Paris Poems by Suzanne Burns Copyright 2010 Published by BlazeVOX [books] Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Book design by Geoffrey Gatza Cover photo by Sab Will First Edition ISBN: 978-1-60964-046-0 Library of Congress Control Number 2010912322 BlazeVOX [books] 303 Bedford Ave Buffalo, NY 14216 Editor@blazevox.org

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Arrival

Always arrive in Paris on a Sunday afternoon the skeleton of this fastened city will become your bones there will be nowhere to sip caf crme no one to sell you postcards no statues exchanging cash for their eternal striptease no one knows but Mona Lisa laughs when the Louvre is closed and even the flea market has sold its final Eiffel Tower of the week get ready: its just you and these abandoned streets. Always arrive in Paris when it rains when European sun subdues itself from becoming that blazing neon voyeur inching every American one mole closer to cancer somehow the Sunday sun of Paris turns everything grey no one tells you there is no color here the sun a tarnished coin hanging in the sky like scenery in a play about PARIS not really Paris. Always arrive in Paris
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after you watch Funny Face you can almost step inside the VistaVision Technicolor trompe-loeil that kicks off the song and dance scene where Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire sever their American-ness gladly singing: Im strictly a tourist but I couldnt care less a temporary ex-pat devotional black turtleneck top hat and tails two sightseers will never be so well received you try shouting: Bonjour, Paris! near the Seine and see. Always arrive in Paris knowing nothing about history refuse to remember the French revolution when your taxi circles the Arc de Triomphe there is a sadness to any war monument you will view the scandal of Nazis goose-stepping down the Champs-lyses in guidebooks never read guidebooks there were no cameras when fallen Queen Maries death carriage delivered her to destiny down the same road where even pointing out blue street signs might sabotage your dream keep dreaming. Always arrive in Paris with an empty heart for the city will fill you the way water fills the ocean
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the Atlantic you just crossed in a cramped seat your CD repeating: je voudrais un petit bifteck se vous plait like you flew all the way to politely order a small steak you will feel alone among millions fall in love with things you never allowed yourself to see: chocolate candy autumn leaves crossing traffic without becoming a casualty. Always arrive in Paris hungry for you will eat devouring street signs and stalls of old books gallons of Malbec and Perrier every Toblerone one mini-bar can hold phone cards to call back home where your family shops for groceries and plays ping pong while you sleep they will never understand why you offered your last Euro to a homeless man who wore red and looked like Maurice Chevalier its because he called you an angel when you smiled ange another word of thousands lost in translation though you understood when he tipped his hat when he kissed your hand you had finally arrived.
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Paris Can Never Be Our Poem

Paris can never be our poem it belongs to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Henry and Anas the filaments of a million lights totemic in the tourists eyes its an ailment to mythologize this European host its allure a history of beheadings mixed with Champagne toasts floating in a boat down the River Seine Eiffel Tower just out of reach but what a treat to stroll the pedigree of streets stuffed on clairs Mona Lisa lives there but Id rather sneak a hand beneath your shirt and stroke the soul of your belly the birth of another great craving I am an amorist I have always found love among used books among used cities drenched in yesterdays phrases in this idolized place to clutch your hand is to commit a kind of suicide for I readily admit to dying every time; this is my sublime form of abuse.
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Paris can never be our poem even the Champs-lyses has no room for us with its reverence for Louis Vuitton I still wear Docs I eat Big Macs when no one is looking my body will never be skinny enough to balance on the red-spiked sole of one Christian Louboutin neither of us understanding how to ornament this mirage of course the catacombs are calling and the Louvre but Paris swallows us in the steam of caf crme it means more to spend time in an attic loft a cheap motel Hemingway would agree he and Hadley making their own scene small parlor of coal blue limericks mixed among oyster shells the fatal design of a woman loving a writer who mostly loved himself. Paris can never be our poem because it belongs to everyone else. 1,000 Notre Dame snapshots Sacr Coeur pencil tops an idolized Montmartre where Amlie taps the top of her crme brulee with a golden coffee spoon
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too soon we seek the delicious in a place that bears no fruit I trade in my plane ticket to stake claim in the nook where your shoulder gives way to your heart. This is big you will insist on missing the last lift to the Eiffel Towers top and choose instead to navigate my skin. It talks. Just listen.

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Louis Vuitton
Admit it was a little sadistic that 249 mile jaunt from farm country into history the soles of your shoes diffusing the gold medallions of dawn shattered along the roadside among your future canvas of brown and tan monograms rising before you as roads and rails and rods of which you scavenged fish after tiny supper fish. Those streams barely gouged your interest. The Seine was already calling the way it calls us all the Americans longing to get lost in Paris the Parisians longing to ignore the Eiffel Tower the Eiffel Tower longing to climb to the top of itself and see what all the fuss is about. Napoleon the Third crowned you the king of trunk makers a calling that stuck from the odd job or two you learned along your exodus it used to be all about creating a safe place
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in case a riot broke out over royal clothes. Now the Champs-lyses can barely contain your name while China hears the silent sound of children trained not to scream when they sew thread into finger bones making knock-offs of you. There is no Olympic stadium to celebrate this. After all these years your dutiful Hollywood pupils still want to look like Hepburn that little boy of a woman with her rat face and no breasts somehow frozen in style with your leather bag as the bleached-blonde bombshells carry their teacup poodles in purses that cost more than the up-and-coming poet in the New Yorker spread makes in five months standing luminescent behind the deli counter of a store that sells Americanized baguettes so starlets can take their poodles on picnics though neither women nor dogs ever eat bread. Louis your initials are more iconic than a crucifix L and V crossed at the fifth thoracic disc
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if letters had spines wed all blush in their closeness the repetition the exalted YES Whitmans barbaric yawp had nothing on this and no amount of reciting the Lords Prayer will keep us less transfixed will keep me less compelled to thrust my chest against Parisian glass your store rising like Atlantis rediscovered every story the sun lost in water captured on brown leather gold rivets white purses more desired than a fence of white pickets. One wallet costing more than my plane ticket. Maybe my soul was on loan when I thought of stealing one barrette LV engraved in the plastic petals of a plastic rose. To speak of worth in Paris makes no sense but my mom deserves to wear
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400 Euros in her hair that delectable ponytail as she compares the price of bread. She would have shared her final loaf with Jean Valjean if thats what it took to keep one of les misrables out of prison she was the queen of grocery stores and homemaking long before everyone revolted against then revered the entire process. Louis Vuitton she is the one who would have given you shelter on your travels washed your clothes cobbled your shoes because she knows how to do the kinds of things we all leave home to learn.

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Our Lady of Paris Bids Adieu

for Paul Newman

The day Paul Newman became a ghost was cold, then too hot as we strolled towards Notre Dame my body keeping time with the cadence of this place more than teenage wishes for bread and berets or childhood longing to befriend that little boy and his red balloon. The day Paris had a vacancy for me Paul Newman checked out of his room. Even the newsstands of France mourned the permanent shutting of such blue eyes I was surprised to see paper signs announcing his demise taped in front of souvenir shops Cool Hand Luke was a Parisian keepsake, too. Who knew? Caught up in the traffic of tourists traveling like nomads from one monument to the next I forgot to notice how Notre Dame really is a benediction in brick nine-hundred years ago King Louis the Young knew you and I
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would need a cathedral to light a candle for Americas fallen saint. Fast Eddie Felson hustling pool Hank Stamper logging my Oregon forests Butch Cassidy and the rest though I loved Brick Pollitt best broken quarterback married to Maggie asking, What is the point of this? The same way I wanted to ask, What is the point of Paris without Paul Newman waiting when we get back? Resting at the edge of a fountain on a lawn hectic with fallen leaves I thought about icons dying of cancer our American Jim Morrison stopping his own heart in a city so old its rime once froze Marie Antoinettes exposed neck now mine, a woman in love with a legend, on film a man in love with Elizabeth Taylor when he asked, What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? And without hearing the answer we already knew.

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