Bernadette at Lourdes
Sister Mary Rose (so young she could’ve been your actual sister)
marched you and her other seventy-two second-grade students
(no teacher aides, no volunteer parents, just the good nun)
eleven blocks west toward the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge
to the palatial Hobart Theater
for your first movie-in-a-movie-theater experience
— The Song of Bernadette,
which — go figure — featured no song
and in 1955 already had been around for twelve years...
but to us was as fresh as our unsoiled souls
as fantastical as a 19th century French peasant girl’s heavenly visions
as miraculous as curative spring waters sprung from the dirt of the local dump
as mysterious as falling in love for the first time
— with 24-year-old Jennifer Jones as the 14-year-old Bernadette
— with the very name Bernadette
and in love with the plot’s seductive subtext:
— there’s lonely-but-lovely long-suffering specialness
in seeing something no one else sees
whether in the wide world …
or within oneself.
Lolita Condemned
The film version of Lolita
sickly slickly sold itself
as sexy, scandalous, sophisticated
and weirdly wickedly sardonic.
Well that’s awfully intriguing said you
and just too damn tempting too said you
a good 14-year-old Catholic boy basically
but burning to be bad.
CONDEMNED! FORBIDDEN!
Don’t dare see this filthy film
commanded the pink-faced pastor
from his high and mighty pulpit.
Combination seduction intimidation
really irresistible — can’t not see it now said you
a good 14-year-old Catholic boy basically
but burning yearning to be bad.
And so you walked to the Earle Theater
located hard by the foreboding rumbling
of the Roosevelt Avenue subway station
told the couldn’t-care-less cashier you were 16
... and sat vaguely afraid ashamed
and oh-so dreadfully eager-anxious in the dark-as-sin dark
staring at the projected smokey light from above
and you saw the forbidden condemned Lolita.
Later when you exited the clean quiet theater
into the din and dirt of Roosevelt Avenue
you felt nothing … nothing but sad and cheated.
Of course not nearly as sad and cheated ...
as a child repeatedly raped (off screen, how tasteful)
— by a predatory putative stepfather.
Not nearly as sad and cheated
as the forbidden condemned Lolita.