On the cover: Light – Reflection, Lis Anna-Langston, private collection
Etiquette
We went to the card files in wooden cabinets
At the downtown Library,
Located Emily Post, 1872-1960, Etiquette.
Emily Post wrote Etiquette, in Society,
In Business, in Politics, and at Home,
[Funk & Wagnalls,] in 1922.
The book encompassed everything in life,
From greetings and salutations,
To one’s position in the community.
Dress, formal dinners,
Wedding preparations,
Christenings, and funerals,
to everyday manners.
We scanned book titles in the stacks,
Until we finally located the well-worn book.
The book had directions on how to act,
While exhibiting good manners.
Family at the table, linen spotless,
The silver polished; table carefully set.
My sister focused on setting the places
For Sunday dinner, without name-cards.
We would have to practice being courteous
To others, while exhibiting self-control,
Giving priority to the interests of others,
(our parents, the kid down the street?).
It all seemed like a vast stretch,
For me at least.
Especially when it came to our cousins,
Joe and Primo,
Who would laugh at us for our actions.
Trying to be polite to them,
For putting on airs.
Or following the rules
Of personal behavior in a polite society.
They didn’t live in a society
Anywhere near polite,
They ate with their hands.
Applying cultural norms, by example,
Would only lead to taunting and futility.
Brasserie La Coupole
We crossed the wet street from the hotel
To the Banque et assurance ATM to withdraw cash,
The exchange rate figured by the machine
Dispensing fresh, newly printed euros.
Then to the Rue du Bac Metro Station,
Downstairs, Line 12 to south of Paris,
On the Left Bank of the Sienne
To Montparnasse Bienvenue Station.
A short walk down Rue de l’Arrivee
To Montparnasse Boulevard and La Coupole,
The classic, and grandest Parisian brasserie,
And certainly one of the most famous.
An art deco masterpiece, a symbol
Of Montparnasse artistic history,
A feature of the Parisian art of living.
Open doors convey you to Paris in 1927,
A Jazz Age, and feverish artistic spirit.
A vast dome in the ceiling of the main room
Has a painting of an octopus suffocating
A naked woman, or is it she choking it?
There are 650 seats, and many wait-stations.
33 ornate pillars painted by previous customers,
Hold up the lofty and decorative ceiling;
27 Parisian artists including Henri Matisse
And Fernand Leger; of naked women
-—naked women of all kinds—-
Naked women pliant, naked women furious,
And everything to be found in between.
Expatriate Henry Miller ate his dinner
At the Table of the Unknown Intellectual
As did political exiles Vladimir Lenin,
Leon Trotsky, and Porfiro Diaz.
Or members of the Lost Generation:
Hemmingway, Edith Piaf, or Salvador Dali,
Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre,
Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Colette.
You will be welcomed here too,
Attended to by a host of practiced waiters
Dressed in black and white uniforms.
Behind the heavy glass and metal doors,
The chef crafts a simple, hearty cuisine,
The famous fresh shellfish platter,
Oysters, clams and other fruits de mer.
Beef fillet flambéed, Lamb curry,
Chicken Supreme with morel mushrooms,
Parisian onion soup, foie gras,
Baked cod, and blue steak,
First-rate cheeses and profiterole.
Restroom provisions are downstairs,
The La Chambre des hommes.
At one time, in the washroom,
A uniformed attendant near the door
Handed you a fresh clean towel
After your visit to the water closet
Behind another door in its own room.
For dinner, we ate appetizers,
Special No.2, Arcachon Bay oysters,
Then Parisian onion soup, roasted monkfish,
Creamy risotto with Parmesan,
Pepper, artichoke, and fresh basil.
For dessert, Bourbon Vanilla Crême Brûlée,
And a cup of gourmet coffee.
On the carefully laid place-setting,
At our deluxe table near a wait-station,
Crumbs from the hard-crusted bread
Lay strewn around my plate,
A waiter with a small crumb-brush in hand
Swept the white tablecloth clean.
Two elegant Parisian dowagers,
Extravagantly dressed for dinner,
Ate a lavish meal at a table nearby,
And enjoyed themselves drinking the wine.
They wore audacious and gaudy jewelry
Their dead husbands bought years ago,
To help them put forth the appearance
Of elevated social position and wealth.
At the end of their luxurious meal
Followed by dessert, the waiter
Presented them with the dinner bill.
One woman produced an elegant purse
And offered the waiter a card.
The electronic credit-card reader,
Like a calculator in his hand,
Made a discernable noise
When the waiter inserted the card.
He was deeply sorry,
The credit card was refused.
One woman was slightly indignant
(Infuriated more at her dead husband,
whose affairs seemed irreconcilable,
leaving her alone and in such straits),
The other woman was embarrassed
And sat quietly and watched.
Another card was rejected by the machine,
And the lunch guest had no card.
Only cash, about fifty euros less
Than what the bill amounted to.
Both women left their driver’s licenses
As bond of their returning to pay the bill
Then hurried out the door.
Doyle White’s Wrecking Yard
Lemoore, CA.
Charles White, the cement-finisher
From Fresno, by way of Oklahoma,
Liked to point out to whomever was listening,
His older brother, Doyle’s business,
Driving old Highway 41, south of Hall’s Corner,
For a deep-sea fishing trip out of Morro Bay.
A ten-acre automobile graveyard
Behind a large square of a wooden fence
A sign painted on the boards:
Doyle White’s Wrecking Yard.
Located between Lemoore Station
And Vanguard, on the south side
Of West Dorris Avenue.
White’s Junk Yard paid cash
For broken, derelict, and discarded
Hulks of automobiles, in various states
Of damage and disrepair, in rows,
Car bodies stacked on each other.
Hoods and metal fenders rusting,
Usable parts sold as light assemblies,
Exhaust systems, hub-caps, wheels.
Engines and transmissions were removed
And sold separately elsewhere.
They were from southern Oklahoma,
The White brother’s family,
Half-Indian, and half-white,
Those that came out to California
To live after the war.
And displayed their native-halves
When they started drinking.
Like Indians, the liquor took over.
The dismantler’s salvage yard;
Scrapheap, was at the north shoreline
Just above the high-water mark,
Of the ancient Tulare Lake,
A 570 square-mile freshwater lake
With marshes and wetlands,
An abundance of waterfowl,
Dried up, after its tributaries
Were diverted for irrigation.
Before 1961, and building
Of the Naval Air Station,
In a desert 100 miles from the sea,
Across the road from the auto salvage
At the edge of the desert,
A grassland adapted to the heat,
Salt brush and alkali sink,
On both sides of Highway 41 at 198.
Doyle White could recycle 75 percent
Of a wrecked car, and still make money.
