CONJUNCTIONS:42, Spring 2004

Two Poems Alexander Theroux

WINGED MONKEYS What frightens little kids about the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz was never their faces, demented, hideously elate, pressed flat like those shiny plastic masks on 1940s children’s dolls. Eagerness is terrifying in anything. What runs, chases. And I hated what in their filthy fur we had to accept as aeropteric by way of warty witch’s wishets. I know, I know, they flew, another grotesque anomaly, along with things tailed wearing bellboy caps with, my god, chinstraps! My question is what moves behind what makes us move in what we choose, accomplishing fates concerning which, may I ask, who is supposed to be aware, me of my life, you ignorantly of yours? The truly real, the Hindus say, Is neti neti, not this and not that, and I admit to walking on ground as precarious as my mind that the booming clouds that rose overhead seemed comparatively firm when, of course, I learned years before hordes of snatching monkeys gibbering with evil could pursue me, they weren’t. Who was being served in what those flapping raptors chased was horrid enough. But even worse was the skin-crawling fact that, set in motion, they were willing to. What terrifies little kids about the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz is their obedience. FRANCHOT TONE Actor Franchot Tone with his smart breloque and shoes gleaming like the roasted light of Italy looked much more essential than a floorwalker but had that nifty breeziness of slick hair. Do you recollect, for instance, how talk is song? He had a sly way of showing with a secret smile, those thin curved lips making mockery a mood, how conversation with oneself is like a gripe, one like patience we with irony all understand. He was a patent-leather neatness. He’d never have bonked lovely Shirley Temple or Betsy Drake who, pronouncing s’s like f’s, was ever cuter, only because sexual paraphernalia did not apply to him, like extra-large pockets or cheap wristwatches or tallness or rubicundity of cheek like tole, not with a name that fit him like a wine label, not with that knowingness, those tailored suits. He spoke with quizzicality, tending not to blink, and always folding his arms when speaking proved with something of mockery through thin curved lips a mood like nifty breeziness can work to show you can acquire integrity just by talking about it.