Jacket 16 - Rachel Loden: two poems

The Bride Of Frankenstein

after Ted Berrigan

It is night. You are asleep. And beautiful stars
are shining in a lowered veil. The bride of

Frankenstein is dead. On my internal muzak
zipper-neck is singing ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz.’

Somebody calls looking for ‘Barney.’ Ah,
sweet mystery of life! And sweeter still since

Transylvania Station is so near. Cue up
the pie in history’s kisser, Vlad Putin

fixing Dubya with his soulful, Stasi stare.
Come let’s mix where Rockefellers walk

with sticks or um-ber-ellas in their mitts . . . .
Are you so sleepy, shaineh maidel? Soft light

is singing to itself behind a falling veil, behind
the line, ‘The bride of Frankenstein is dead.’

in memory of Madeline Kahn

My Angels, Their Pink Wings

Who, if I pitched a hissy fit, would even
blink a powdered eyelid

among the angelic orders? The night sky
is indifferent and glittery with facts.

A third millennium giddily
boots up and Lenin, firm and pliant

from his glycerine bath, waits for kisses
in the glass sarcophagus. But I too

wish to call a meeting of the Committee
for the Deathless Beauty

of the Tsar, the standing Congress for
the Recarnation of the President. I too

wish to lie in state inside the Hall
of Pillars, in the echoes of the Capitol

Rotunda, cooing to my tricky
one, crooning to my trembling Republic.

The opening lines of this poem are loosely based on Rilke’s first ‘Duino Elegy’. You can read Marjorie Perloff’s discussion of the problems of translating the opening lines of the first ‘Duino Elegy’ (and other matters including Duchamp and Wittgenstein) in Jacket 14.

Rachel Loden’s book Hotel Imperium won the Contemporary Poetry Series competition of the University of Georgia Press and made Tom Clark’s annual top ten poetry list in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review. She has a new illustrated chapbook, Affidavit (Pomegranate Press). Her home page is at http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html

Overland magazine feature

Rachel Loden: two poems

The Bride Of Frankenstein

My Angels, Their Pink Wings