Stephen Kessler
Awaiting My Wreath at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel
The truckload of laurels should pull into Valet Parking any minute
and dump them on the red carpet for starving poets
to season their soups with for a few years.
Between a Mercedes Benz and a Maserati
my wounded Subaru is parked with dignity on Rodeo Drive,
washed this afternoon so the sun’s reflection off its silvery surface
will flash in the blinded lenses of the paparazzi and enable my escape,
more skilled and sneaky than Diana’s,
from their invasive glances.
May female gazes find my attire sufficiently fetching
to attract their admiration and let the bartenders for social responsibility
shake their cocktails with aplomb in the heart of deepest Hollywood.
Though the fragrant leaves are scratchy on my brow
and the olive oil gleaming on my tanned skin feels slightly slippery,
I can keep my feet on the marble floors of the ballroom
and won’t let glory go to my head because tomorrow I’ll be nobody again,
like Odysseus pulling the wool over the Cyclops eyes,
those cameras trying to fix us for eternity.
photo by Joel Leivick
Stephen Kessler lives in California. His recent books include Forbidden Pleasures: New Selected Poems by Luis Cernuda (Black Widow Press, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for translation), Where Was I? (Greenhouse Review Press, prose poems), and Save Twilight: Selected Poems by Julio Cortázar (City Lights Books, translation). The poem here is from a new manuscript, Garage Elegies.