Deep South v.1 n.3 (Spring, 1995)
On Brooklyn Bridge, I've never been there, it's Hart Crane half-remembered, half-read, a bit of the Metaphysic and a little John Donne, well anyway, there's this Milly Theale who works part-time And there's nothing like part-time redemption she's climbed Brooklyn Bridge, and she's about to spread her wings, an urban dove, for this low-life, Merton somebody or other with whom she's in love, and she's up there, and an on-looker, Mrs Susan Shepherd Stringham puts her hands in her mouth, and she feels a bit sick and a bit wan. "Milly don't whatever you do fly, he's not worth it!" and in a stone's throw there's a book by Henry James, a touch of tasteless trompe l'oeil on the bench, "To go! To go! Sam!" a kitsch reference to Bob Newhart, and she's going to die, forget everything in the Edwardian preface, it's real, she's lost her heart when she found out he was two-timing her with Kate, by then it was far too late. And from Brooklyn Bridge, I've never been up there It's Milton, and some German movie about angels, from the precipice, plummeting, and still frames of one's entire life, existence, one's heart, down and down to the abyss, into the suburban icarus waiting fame in a nickel odeon. She drowns to save our souls, you scum Milly your dear sacrificial lamb, your postmodern sweetheart who never was in full-time employment well never except for those sad jingles: coo coo looka coo I love you, I love you, coo coo look coo, I can't help falling in love with you.
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