Juliet Prowse and the Cast of Can-Can Dance for Nikita Krushchev, Hollywood, 1959

Despite thunderheads, the Premier had ordered
    his pilot twice to circle the block letters,
heal-all white on a dry hillside—puny,

he’d thought, the whole sad charade nowhere
    bigger than life. While his motorcade stalls
and traffic gawks, she ponders her part

in Cold War drama. Sinatra, her co-star, offers,
    “Think of him buck naked. It’ll still
your jitters.” She pukes in her pink trash can.

Then sirens and Secret Service, Mr. and Mrs. K
    parade to chairs their names are stenciled on.
The Mrs., stout potato, nearly topples

the liquored-up chivalric director
    who offers his hand. Some garbled Russian,
an automatic bow, Khrushchev appraising

the best pair of legs since Grable’s as mere
    bomber art. Halfway through, she floats home,
adolescent ballerina dancing

Swan Lake her first time, only to return
    to Khrushchev, spectacles on, ogling her
panties’ ruffled crotch flash up, down, up.

Applause, his cheeks flushed above burnished teeth,
    and the Mrs., now silent potato,
beads sweat along a not-so-faint mustache.

So much pleads future tense: Khrushchev’s rant
    against such evident Western decadence
splashing newspapers the lurid world over,

a photo of their handshake so ubiquitous
    even Elvis, who never reads, decides
at a glance she’ll play his love in “G.I. Blues.”

Nyet. No, not yet. Push rewind. Not the late
    jumpsuited and bulbous Elvis stoned on stage
in Vegas. Rewind. Not Oswald dropping

on knee to squeeze the trigger on Camelot.
    Not even Kennedy and the missiles
of October. There, oh sun-drenched

Eisenhower afternoon, sea breeze sweetly
    buffeting white taffeta. Sinatra
mixes double martinis—one for him,

one for her taut legs knotted as the curtain
    she changes behind—Frankie confiding,
“Baby, I think the guy really dug it.”

Printed in the Spring/Summer 2000 issue of CLR

Kevin Stein is the author of five books of poetry and criticism, most recently Private Poets, Worldly Acts (Ohio University Press, 1999), essays on poetry and history. The poems printed here will appear in his forthcoming collection, Chance Ransom, to be published by University of Illinois Press in Fall 2000. He teaches at Bradley University.

You can find Kevin Stein on the web at:
—  Bradley University
—  Bruised Paradise
—  An Illinois Portfolio
—  Chance Ransom
—  Private Poets, Worldly Acts
—  Amazon (Please note that this page will list works by multiple authors named Kevin Stein)
—  Barnes & Noble (Please note that this page will list works by multiple authors named Kevin Stein)