1.

Nancy in the Moon / a correspondence 

2.

What drove you to throw

your Brandy Alexander

into my framed etching

hanging

on the wall to the hallway

leading to the bathroom?

I did something.

3.

It's when dressing

for the evening's wedding reception

for the wealthier brother

of a wealthy friend, and you lost

one of your black high heels.

We couldn’t find it anywhere.— We

looked all over the apartment, under the bed,

in the drawer where my socks rested,

out the back-porch window

toward the neighbor's howling beagle,

in the box under the sink

where we kept the hammer and that useless sconce.

We were running out of time

so you slipped your feet into the glossy

white high heels instead and we ran

downstairs to the car and drove to Westport.

4.

In the great tent erected on the sweeping lawn
rolling toward Buzzards Bay and the pearly,
violet strand of the Elizabeth Islands,

the plump, already married jewish ladies frowned at their tables

beneath their starchy hairdos, pressed into too tight dresses

and raised their thick eyebrows at the sight of you

as if you were Palestinian — and they, with the distant,

scud-missile-weary eyes of their older cousins

sheltering somewhere in Gaza.

All this over the choice of shoes you made on the run.

You electrified the giant tent that night

with your black leather miniskirt and white high heels

as glazed as the faceplate of the Moon!

5.

In time, something I did disturbed the slender balance

of the natural order of things causing you to throw

your Brandy Alexander at my etching.—— christ,

I remember the process it took to get it to what it finally looked like.

6.

A mono-print intaglio on light-green hued heavy stock paper,

Pulled from the plate, 33 x 25 inches.

Three horses forward, mid-plane, two fanning away from the central horse,

All three with riders cloaked in what appeared to be a stance of war.

Beneath them two horizontal panels containing figures dressed

In the medieval garb of the peasantry, holding straw-headed brooms
And pitchforks cut from wood.

In the far distance a fierce battle is being waged.

Variances in color intensity permeated the background.

These variances were the cause of liquified white-ground,

Atomized over the zinc plate's surface before its acid bath,

A deep, Dutch Mordant etch to be flooded with ink.

As subject matter the mono-print made no historic claim.

But visually, so said my contemporaries, it was a real knockout;
Signed by me and dated 1967 at the base, far right corner in pencil

And presented to you on your birthday years later and,

You threw your sticky Brandy Alexander smack-dab into it

Shattering its glass enclosure like a mortal sin attacking an already

Blemished soul.

The end