University of Southern Mississippi

The Hair of Eva perón

Author(s): Lucie Brock-Broido
Source: Mississippi Review, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Winter, 1981), pp. 27-30
Published by: University of Southern Mississippi
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20133797
Accessed: 28-06-2016 03:55 UTC

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 Lucie Brock-Broido

The

ir of Eva Peron

I can't sleep. The hair of Eva Peron

is keeping me up. It is blonde still
in the velvet scalp inside the jewelry box
you are a jewel Evita-she can't
sleep. The box is red inside
too red. The color there is keeping Eva
wide awake.

And from the bald and satin temple

near the browbone-of the jewelled mane, outside Madrid
Evita's hair grows through the Iron Gate. Outside
of Spain, he loves her like the land, the south,
the whip, the ghost, the winter that began in May
in Buenos Aires when the opera sparked the first
day of the season, inverted far, way past the tropics
low from the equator, down below
her tropics, when that cold wind
came, he loved her like her white hand at her hard
mouth, loved her garish
loved her softly
in that morning of October when he made her virgin
pieces infinite. Again. She was a virgin then so
many times. So pink by morning, moist with spring.

Three times he went to touch her

she was cool and pornographic-she is sleeping.

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28 Lucie Brock-Broido

Only sleeping.
She is filled with resins
plump with honeys, almond, eucalyptus boughs.

Ripe as the Egyptian soul that waits

for passage on the river Nile:
Bedecked in blues and garnishes, bemasqued in mint and lotus
thick brocades, his Eva, spiced and oiled with her eyes like
caviar-that rich and carnal-his Evita's breath is vital
as a white wind spangled in a light Anubian which glows
like Cleopatra's nipples
when they lit the first rare
morning of the Nile white.

Three times he went to touch her

but her mouth was tepid, indigo
her fingers tipped in black, his hand
too roused and warm. For fear the perfect flesh
might wither or the ghost exhale a plume of dust.
For fear that he might stain the wind about her.
There he stopped.

Her breasts were glaring even then.

And they were Catholic, tiny
where the sainted nipples glanced like flints
that dark and dangerous behind the Iron Gates.

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 Lucie Brock-Broido 29

Shall I give you fire?

And I've heard her speak at night some
times when vital fluids find their passages
and spark in dreams like drowsy humours.
Cool and sensual, embalmed in bile
and speech and glycerins.

We must be fanatical.
He loved her like the last bare-breasted streamers
of some Spanish dancers in procession at the funeral
of dusk-their manes are sequined-like the last
incense of moonlight looming fragrant
at the first and twilit cusp of dawn.
Her mouth is open now and clean with ash.
He loved her like the fruits on breath of demons.
Loved her white and fragile and fanatical.
For she was sleeping. She is
only sleeping:

I am wide awake.
Eva Peron is keeping me up.
It is her hair that bothers me.
It is blonde still at its roots
inside the Iron Gate.

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30 Lucie Brock-Broido

There is a light Anubian and infinite

illumes this dreamless season
it is winter-down beneath and low in Argentina.
The hair of Eva-jewel, somnambulist
still grows. The fire in the velvet box is blonde
and spirited and high. He loves her she is
sleeping. I am wide and warm awake.

L:J

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