Star Ledger

Almost time to dress for the sun's total eclipse

   so the child pastes one last face

in her album of movie stars – Myrna Loy

   and Olivia de Havilland – names meant to conjure

sultry nights, voluptuous turns across

   some dance floor borne on clouds. Jean Harlow.

Clipped from the Newark evening paper, whole galaxies

   of splendid starlets gaze, fixed to violet pages

spread drying on the kitchen table. The child whispers

   their names when she tests “lorgnettes”

made that morning out of shirtboards, old film

   negatives gleaned from her grandmother’s hat box.



Through phony opera glasses, hall lights blur

   stained sepia above her, and her grandmother’s

room is stained by a tall oak’s crown, yellow

   in the window. Acorns crack against asphalt

three floors down. The paper promised

   “a rare conjunction of sun and moon and earth.”

Her grandmother brushed thick gray hair.

   Cut glass bottles and jewel cases.

Above the corset her back was soft, black moles

   she called her “melanomas” dusted across

powdery skin like a night sky, inside out.

   The Spanish fan dangles from her wrist

and when she stands she looks like an actress

   from the late-night movies. The child sifts

costume brooches, glass rubies and sapphires,

   to find the dark gold snake ring with emerald chips

for eyes. She carries the miniature hourglass

   to the sagging porch, then waiting turns it over

and over. Uncertain in high heels, she teeters

   and the shawl draped flamenco-style keeps sliding off

her shoulder, so she glances up the block to Girl Scouts

   reeling down the flag. The child hates their dull uniforms,

how they scatter shrieking through leafsmoke and the sheen

   of fallen chestnuts. She touches the ring, heavy

on a ribbon circling her neck, then thinks she’ll sew

   the album pages with green embroidery silk.

Her grandmother snaps the fan and they raise lorgnettes

   to the sun’s charcoaled face, its thin wreath

of fire. Quiet, the Girl Scouts bow their heads – sleek

   Italian ones and black girls with myriad tight braids.

Streetlights hum on, then the towers of Manhattan flare

   beyond the river. The earth must carve its grave ellipse

through desert space, through years and histories

   before it will cross with sun and moon this way again.

Minor starlets in the child’s album will fade and tatter,

   fleeting constellations with names flimsy as

the shawl that wraps her shoulders. She’ll remember this

   as foolish. The girls by the flag will mostly leave

for lives of poverty, crippled dreams, and Newark

   will collapse to burn like another dying star.

But none of this has happened. Afternoon has stilled

   with the eclipse that strips them of their shadows,

so each one stands within their own brief human orbit

   while the world reverses, then slowly, recovers.