Marcella’s Homestead, Dickson, Tennessee

Marcella is the only woman
I have known who has kissed
Elvis, and I imagine it had
to occur after "I Want to Play
House with You," after
the King sang the lines,
"I’d rather see you dead, little girl,
than be with another man,"
and I asked you, Marcella’s daughter,
where was she kissed--
Tahoe? Vegas? Honolulu? No,
on the lips, stupid . . . and
that’s the joke I recall,
as Marcella frames us with
her camera, before her old homestead,
the tar-paper intact,
the wallpaper still radiant violet,
abandoned in 1959, Elvis overseas
then, and Marcella heading west.
I am ready for Marcella to say
"Smile." And I do, thinking
of that joke. Or maybe it is you
I think of, how the disaffection
of air and light leaves our bodies
estranged and new, how I long to kiss
you, how I would rather see you
alive, possible, even with another
man, how self-pity washes
from me when I hold your hips,
your shuddering falling away, and
when the words I whisper
to you are no longer divisible,
distressed. But all that Marcella
does is wave her hand above
the camera, brushing the air, saying,
"There, there, hold it,"
as the shadows of sugar maple
and oak abrade our faces with
a lightness we readily bear.

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