lucie brock-broido

And So Long I’ve Had You Fame

How odd that she would die into an August
night, I would have thought
she would have gone out in a pale clear
night of autumn, covered to the shoulder
in an ivory sheet, hair
fanned out across the pillow perfectly.
Fame will go by, and, so long, I’ve had you, Fame.
From under the door, the lights leak
into the hall & Sinatra going
over & over in the bedroom on repeat.
I was six & you were dying out.
I was sitting in a sky blue metal chair
in our kitchen in the east
digesting the fact, still, of my mother’s second
honeymoon & the man living all over
our house, that she loved him, had him hard.
The sun was on our kitchen table, lighting
the back of my hand & the headline
in the Post Gazette said you were done.
That you were dying
even in the hour when our neighbourhood
went indigo last night, in the hour
when our palms were stained by Sno-Cones,
in the hour when Russell’s father would take home
the bases from the baseball diamond,
then my sister & I would move like spiders
into the nests of our dotted swiss nightgowns,
in the hours of a windless August night
in Pittsburgh & somewhere
Sinatra redundant
no one lifts he needle up, he’s singing
like an angel
all night long along the famous dusk
of the Pacific shoreline
as your breathing slowed into the sweetest
toxic nothingness, so long, I’ve had you, fac
down, Cursum Perficio