April 2021
Bio Note: I’m nearly finished with a project several years in the doing, which is
editing the memoir of my stepfather, the American sculptor Harvey Fite, from a manuscript I found
quite by accident with a bunch of other papers. It must have been written in the 1930s, when he had
not yet become a sculptor, but was instead an aspiring actor. It covers his boyhood in Texas, coming
east to college, leaving college for the stage. That, my V-V column, my continuing history of jazz in
the 1950s-60s. and the occasional poem occupy my writing time.
Arresting the Surrealists
After a line in George Antheil's memoirs
The police entered and
any number of
surrealists,
Society personages,
and people of all description
were arrested.
Proust was home
in bed,
but
Picasso was there,
Stravinsky,
Satie,
Milhaud, Joyce, Man Ray,
Ford Madox Ford,
Miro, and
in the confusion no one heard
what mad Nijinsky said
about Diaghelev.
Best to Go
We all die, which is why
she wants to look you over now, though
she won't say it, or anything. Her
silence is scraped together from birds
swarming from lawn to treetop,
or money being measured,
or your mistress, the one who rides
naked at dawn, whose skin is golden.
Hers is pale. Best to go to her.
You Can
You can
talk to Death but
you can’t feed him
easy to remember
when he comes in white
tie and tails
an ambassador’s sash
sits at the head
of the table snaps
his fingers for servants
demands the best
china the perfect
vintage wine
2005 Lynch-Bages
sends to the chef for
a roast suckling
pig with an apple
in its mouth
harder when you look
down and he’s there as
a puppy with soft eyes
©2021 Tad Richards
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It is very important. -JL