The Last Gardenia Writes to Lady

Billie, I told the Devil not to let you into Hell.
I know it’s where you think you’ll be headed

soon, when at last that golden horse’s hooves run
roughshod your heart. You, my precious, have your own

heat, a heady steam off your scalp. Before you,
I hated my smell, like a man’s fingertips after stealing

a girl from her mother’s garden. But on your ear,
I’m lemons and gin, all sour and swing.

The one who came for me wore gloves.
Carried a red rake, a cigarette. It strangled in his lips.

Not the way a smoke seems to sprout
from yours: delicate, precarious, final

twig dangling between a wintersick mockingbird
and flight. All of us left on the limbs heard

stories about where we’d be going: the city, a lady,
her trombone song. I’m sorry I had barely enough

Spring to keep you in bloom for one night. Sorry
you couldn’t see, like I did, how you make men

sway. Make them suffer their want. It is May 26th ,
1959. A strangely cold day for New York.