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For Love
of an
Armadillo
Didi Menendez
Jeremy Baum
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For Love
of an
Armadillo
Poems by
Didi Menendez
Illustrated by
Jeremy Baum
 Published by
GOSS 183::CASA MENENDEZ
www.mipoesias.com
Bloomington, Illinois
Copyright © 2008-2009
Didi Menendez and Jeremy Baum
Decicated to our friend John Korn.
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 CONTENTS

Armadillo 1
Armadillo 3
Shadowbox 5
Armadillo and the Hollywood Starlets 7
Let s Dance 11
Armadillos Shoes 13
Conquest 15
Armadillo s Kisses 17
Lives 19
Armadillo and Andalucia 21
The Conquistador 25
Armadillo s Dice 27
More 31
Armadillo s Armor 33
Armadillo
 ARMADILLO
There is an One day I woke up
armadillo burrowed and there was the
into my chest. armadillo filling
up the arroyo
My breasts I have become.
have made way
to accommodate Sometimes the
the armadillo. armadillo shells
out a ballad.
I am not sure how
the armadillo found
his way into my life.

3
I tell myself Each day
not to feel the armadillo
for the armadillo. digs deeper
and deeper
No respectable into the cavity
woman my age of what used
should feel for to be my heart.
an armadillo.

4
Shadowbox
ARMADILLO AND THE
Armadillo loves insects.
He collects them ever
since he can remember.

Armadillo has a wide variety

of butterflies and moths
not to mention exotic
species such as the
Mexican Fruit Fly
and the Africanized Honey Bee.

Armadillo has acquired

his collection from his travels
abroad and through his many
incarnations.

Armadillo loves bugs almost as much

as Hollywood Starlets.

In the 20’s Armadillo fell head over heels

for Greta Garbo. He followed her
everywhere until one day
Greta had to tell him
“I want to be alone.”

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HOLLYWOOD STARLETS
In the 30’s Armadillo seduced Jean Harlow.
In the 40’s it was Judy Garland.
Although Judy was short and brunette,
Armadillo cherished her.

In the 50’s Doris Day wanted

to be in the picture but Armadillo
said none of that and he left Hollywood
only to turn up in Las Vegas in the 60’s
along with the remains of the Rat Pack.

Armadillo hung out with Sinatra.

When Armadillo was introduced to Mia Farrow,
he thought his heart had stopped beating
and he was going to leave earth.

Armadillo’s heart survived the pixie like woman

who resembled his fast growing bug collection
and shared quiet moments with the starlet
while old blue eyes was belting a tune.

Armadillo followed her everywhere

right into the 70s while she played opposite
of Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby.

8
ARMADILLO AND THE HOLLYWOOD STARLETS

For the first time in his life Armadillo became jealous.

He was no competition for Woody Allen
who in a way was just another big cucaracha
so he finally felt he must leave Mia forever
and followed a Monarch butterfly
into the next decade.

Armadillo was lost in the 80’s.

He found himself lonelier than ever
and resorted to his ant farm for comfort.

He became enamored
with new and never before seen
creatures traveling near and far to find them
until one day he ended up here with me
and here we are under each other’s microscope
until it is time to say Adios Armadillo.

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Let’s Dance
ARMADILLO’S SHOES

Armadillo please take out

your dancing shoes.
Here is the polish.

How do you expect to

have an audience
unless you start tapping?
Where is the applause?

Shine those shoes please.

I will spit on them for you.

Armadillo you sure look snappy.

Come on Armadillo
We’ll play Benny Goodman
records and we’ll mambo
with Xavier Cougat.

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I’ll knit you a sweater.
We can share a sandwich.
The coca-cola is chilling
in the ice box.

If you are really good, we can

Chattanooga Choo Choo.

After you are done with the tapping

and you are full of perspiration
I want to dance with you slow
under the drunken moon.

I want to have your drops of sweat

drop on my brow as if I did all the work.

I want to place my ear against

your heart so we can share the rattle.

I want you to kiss me Armadillo.

I want you to kiss me.
I want you to kiss me hard.

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Conquest
Conquest
ARMADILLO’S KISSES
Armadillo only kisses me
when there is a full moon
or when it rains.

Sometimes we lay in bed

and stare at the ceiling’s lamp.

Sometimes Armadillo
gives me a back rub.
He places his bony fingers
around my neck and massages
away the day’s thoughts.

Sometimes Armadillo
puts his mouth near my ear
and whispers a poem he
wrote on a napkin during lunch.

Besides these rare occasions

we hardly ever touch.
We watch reruns of
Alias Smith and Jones instead.

We have a debate as to
why the main character
was murdered by his girlfriend.
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Sometimes Armadillo comes up
with a better answer than mine.
Sometimes I win the debate.

Sometimes we discuss who was

scarier Bella Lugosi or Boris Karloff?

Sometimes I make Armadillo dinner.

His favorite is shellfish although
I must be very careful never to serve
him snails al ajillo because snails
remind him of his first love.

Tonight there will be a full moon

and the weather channel is predicting rain.

Tonight Armadillo will put his boney

fingers around my neck and place
his other boney hand in the small
of my back and lean down and kiss
me first softly and then with emotion
as if he has never kissed me under
the full moon or rain before and I
will pull him close to me so I
can feel everything that is hard
about Armadillo as if life
were not hard enough.
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Lives
ARMADILLO AND
My name is Andalucia.
Some people call me Lucia.
Some people call me Andy.
Some people call me Lucie.
Some people call me Loo Loo.
Armadillo calls me Dominique.
He says I remind him of a nun.

Armadillo wears an armor

everywhere he goes.
He even wears it to bed.

He said he got it when he

was a conquistador with
Ponce de Leon.

I told him I died at

Auschwitz Birkenau.

He believed me.
I believed him.

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ANDALUCIA
That subject was closed.
We never brought it up again.

I did not tell him about

my previous deaths.

They were all monstrous

or tragic or incomprehensible

except for that one time

when I died while making love
to a woman in Josephine Bonaparte’s
court and in a way I will have to put
that death on the inconvenience list.

I have died as a man.

I have died as a woman.
I have died as child.
I have died as a newborn.
I have been a still death.

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ARMADILLO AND ANDALUCIA

Armadillo’s name is not really Armadillo.

I call him Armadillo because of the
conquistador armor.

His real name may be Harry or Richard or Tom.

I don’t know because he never offered to tell me.
I never asked.

I never ask Armadillo anything.

He never asks me anything either
except for the occasional what’s for dinner?

I once served him picadillo

and we could not stop laughing
right into the next century.

Tonight we will watch tv.

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ARMADILLO AND ANDALUCIA

The Streets of San Francisco.

Sanford and Son.
The Jeffersons.
The Carol Burnett Show.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The Dick Van Dyke Show.
The Ed Sullivan Show.
The Andy Griffith Show.
Bridget Loves Bernie.
Love American Style.
Mod Squad.
Mannix.
The Flying Nun.
Nanny and the Professor.
Marcus Welby M.D.
Medical Center.
Welcome Back Kotter.
The Odd Couple.
Flipper.

We always watch reruns.

This is what we understand best.

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The Conquistador
ARMADILLO’S DICE
Armadillo has gone for a walk.
I never leave this house.
He says the armor is weighing him down.
A walk will do him well.
He will be gone for exactly one light year.
His walks are never longer than that.

I want to go back to when I was 14.

It was 1934 in Berlin and the streets
were bustling with traffic and it seemed
like everyone was in a hurry
to get somewhere, anywhere
except no one was really moving.
I was headed to the Cinema to watch
the latest film from Hollywood.

I was a scrawny girl with auburn hair

and my face had not caught up to my nose.
I combed my hair like Ginger Rogers.

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My friends and I are headed inside
the dark smoky theatre where everyone
is taking a seat and standing up
and taking a seat and laughing and then crying
as if they were the ones in the film
until silence takes over with a hush.
Hush someone says and then another
and then another please hush please
be quiet, please be quiet, please.

This is when Armadillo returns from

his walk which took exactly
one light year which to a human equals
exactly 15 minutes and 7 seconds.
Armadillo looks over to me and
I know what he wants so I put
away my 14 year old self
and go back to being the nun-like
creature he understands and offer
to give his armor a rub.

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ARMADILLO’S DICE

I rub him down.

I rub him down with precision.
I use my own fingers in between
each groove between each crease.
I rub him down.
I rub him down until the weight
of every single moment in time
is released. He says to me:
I was in Las Vegas in 1965.
I was sitting by the roulette table.
Mia Farrow blew my dice

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More
ARMADILLO’S ARMOR
Armadillo sat at the foot of the bed.
He said it was time.
He said he had to leave now.

I wanted to tell him next time

we would do things different.

We would be born in the same decade.

We would have nine to five jobs.
We would meet at the Deli for lunch.
We would order the same sandwich.
Tuna on rye.

We would get married in a church with a steeple

We would have 2.3 children.

We would turn our taxes in ahead of time.

We would be into sports, racquetball, basketball,
football, tennis and cheer for the same team.

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We would join the PTO.
We would be President of the PTO.

We would vacation in Lake Tahoe.

We would vote Republican.
We would buy a home in the suburbs.
We would celebrate our anniversary past 50 years.
We would be buried in the same cemetery
with matching headstones.

Once death was staring back at me,

I pulled a cobra from my mouth.

It slithered by my frost bitten toes.

My uterus gave birth to clots of baby parts.
My colon expelled Francis Bacon.

Garcia-Lorca stood in front of the firing squad.

I coughed up a frozen lake.

Che pointed a rifle to my left temple.
I pulled the nails from my bloody fingers.
George Harrison handed me his guitar.

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ARMADILLO’S ARMOR

Cole Porter sang Begin the Beguine.

Hedda Hopper jotted it all down.

Armadillo stood from the foot of the bed

and looked at the vast eternity above him.

Armadillo then looked below to the same eternity.

This was when he shed the armor and left

and this was when I found myself crying
at the top of my lungs as a woman held a breast to
my mouth and I, defenseless, suckled on to dear life.

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 Didi Menendez is a cuban-blooded
American artist, editor, publisher and
author. She lives in the middle of nowhere.

Jeremy Baum is an American artist

and illustrator. He lives in Pennsylvania.
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