Dietrich Drag Show

Dietrich Drag Show
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Dietrich Drag Show
Marilyn Monroe’s Daughter
Marlene Dietrich
Reading in Bed
Arlene Dahl
Lady Rex
Queen Diana
Elizabeth Taylor
Norma Desmond
Billie Holiday
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Dietrich Drag Show

“my kind do not
grow old well”
—John Wieners,
“The Gay World Has
Changed,” Selected
Poems (1958-1984)

where she used to dream—
among garbos and dietrichs
now loud bands play…

gone drag-show movies—
replaced by torch songs and
drunk young dancing couples

moiling football crowds—
chic hollywood bitch queens
having fled the scene

Marilyn Monroe’s Daughter

“I shrink from the
sight of her splendor”
—John Wieners,
“Maria Gouverneur,”
Behind the State Capitol

campus coiffure so quaint—
her supreme parisian cinematic
unblemished moment

her dumpy chimes apartment—
rare egyptian emerald tiara
reginatur in the pawn shop

her bordello chateau—
in the varsity theater’s shadows
her wet boudoir lips for rent

Marlene Dietrich

“Poetry is a trance
of make-believe”
—John Wieners,
“Concentration,”
Selected Poems

the way tiger town—
reaches out & says to her
here take this one

here take that one—
it’s all just too much like
hollywood make-believe

the trances come & go—
dazed weimar cabaret blues
marlene in berlin drag

Reading in Bed

“to write a poem”
—John Wieners,
“Reading in Bed,”
Selected Poems

Even tho the gift’s gone—
her handwriting changed
her mind broken in two

she still sits in bed—
poring over the past
trying to recall her love-life

it sets up doubt, despair—
another nervous breakdown
a thousand pills can’t cure

Arlene Dahl

“Only a parlor game”
—John Wieners,
“Concentration,”
Selected Poems

it’s only a parlor game—
these metropolitan pastiche
reconstructions of the past

such strange habitations—
can only produce felonies
prolonged incarcerations

or exile that dreaded—
deprivation of one’s birthplace
matinee queer filmic faints

Lady Rex

“a new slipcover—
for the couch”
—John Wieners,
“Family Critique,”
Behind the State Capitol

daguerreotype bouquets—
blossoms & bridal wreathed
veils, elvis black velvet lips

walking across campus—
finding herself embossed in
dahlias, pecans raining down

even yesterday josephine—
viscountess of vile, repulsed
by urban apartment sprawl

Queen Diana

"dead to world chemistry”
—John Wieners,
“Queen Beatrice Day
Mirrors,” Behind
the State Capitol

she writes her own party—
behind the clucking tongues
charles the great inseminator

an older druid generation—
gets even the usual routine
murder in a bus tunnel

an heir, a bastard son—
these are her importunate
shadings of the crown

Elizabeth Taylor

“drooping bend
the window decor”
—John Wieners,
“Elizabeth Monroe,”
Behind the State Capitol

glamorous stooping star—
magnificent expanse of bijou
parlors, mortician stiffs

resurrection of delta divoon—
equipage of pool hall and
decadent genuine cockroaches

hadrionic curls falling—
down on his poverty-stricken
shoulders, touchy torpor

Norma Desmond

“a womanish heart”
—John Wieners,
“Queen Beatrice Day
Mirrors,” Behind
the State Capitol

she tires of success—
wrapping herself in comeback
dreams that will never come

dead william holden—
floats in the pool talking scripts
these writers don’t give up

the spacious staircase waits—
sunset blvd falls back into a
darkness of short eternity

Billie Holiday

“a maroon blue gown”
—John Wieners,
“To Billie Holiday’s If
I Were You,” Behind
the State Capitol

billie sang the blues—
just like miss thing sang
in her dingy apartment

even as a black girl—
she would’ve been punished
in africa for being gay

she slept alone—
childless in her dingy
chilly chimes bedroom