The Miseducation of:
by Legacy Russell
1. Arbus
they say she was a cold body before the warmth even left her
that she was confused, often too imaginative, and in this way child-like
no woman ought to do those things—naked tea parties, fights with husbands, neglecting neatly manicured lawns and nails
during excavations of jungles behind basement doors that were not her own
under supermarket-manufactured fluorescent she inspected babies alongside pork-chops and because she saw no difference
they gave her a valium and suggested a vacation
O, Diane, if you had only seen Los Angeles! perhaps the hills there could have saved you, something in the bubble gum pink
streaking through the streets and skin shades darker than it was born,
perhaps there you would have been a showgirl or a pin-up or a betty boop
locked inside a big birthday cake, oh, how your husband would have delighted when you popped out all dotted with glitter, wrists bleeding with ribbons and bells
New Amsterdam is all blacks and grays so many business suits and women bruised by the task of putting dinners on tables by five-to-six
fame is California! red-carpets stained with the footsteps of bette davis and brando
maybe you could have lived it while you were still alive:
a lady like you woulda looked grand in swimsuits and neon-colored cocktails,
camera far away and floating in the azure of
kidney pools and starlet bedroom eyes
2. Monroe
Marilyn Monroe is at Newark Airport and is pissed off because her plane is late.
The motion picture goes like this:
She walks down the runway her size sixteen soaked with neon and waving her hands in the air. Marilyn goes and gets a Starbucks, Chai Latte.
Frappuchino.
Mappuchino.
Nappachino.
She stands on the moving sidewalk and flies right past Snow Flakes and Dunn Brothers and New York Herald Tribune.
Gets off, goes to the powder room, takes a shit.
Back on: New York Herald Tribune and Dunn Brothers and Snow Flakes and God. Bless. America.
Outside—standing between jets with propellers big enough to chop a girl to pieces—she checks her iPhone, shifts from one high heel to the other, adjusts her thong.
A little boy standing nearby goes zoom! Zoom! Zoom zoom!
He runs his fingers up the line of her pantyhose: Excuse me miss—there are highways on your thighs!
Legacy Russell is a writer and mixed media artist living and working in New York City.
Born and raised in the East Village: Thompkins Square Park ‘HOWL’! Karen Finley’s America! Faith Ringgold’s ‘Tar Beach’ rooftops!
These poems are part of a larger poetic journey in process, titled ‘Young Love’.
