Mickey J Corrigan

Dorothy Parker on Dorothy Parker's Heart

A plucky feisty flapper
fresh faced and razor sharp
but inside I was hiding
a sorrowful heart
always waiting
for some damned man!

I married the first one
in the rush of the war
a handsome officer
introduced me to gin
returned to me ruined
morphine addict, drunk
scratch a lover, I said
you'll find a foe
we parted then
I put all my eggs
into one bastard
and had an abortion
and reached for the bottle
tranquilizers too.

With each love lost
my heart swelled, then
hardened in misery
squeezed thin, flattened
under headstones, grave
thoughts of death grew
into a drowsy comfort
how nice, how restful
how much better below
the cold hard ground
than here, above it.

Three more times
I felt solidarity
with the voluntary dead
scars on both wrists
wrapped in black velvet
ribbon and bows
and once I drank
a bottle of shoe polish
but lived to tell it
as a wry joke.

My second husband loved me
out on the west coast
writing for fame
for Twentieth Century Fucks
we made a good team
but the sweeter the apple
the blacker the core and
he was bi
or gay
or infatuated
with another woman.

Alone in my old age
cash did not sully
these bony fingers
and death came slowly
then, typically, suddenly
my poor battered heart
chipped like my headstone
that said Pardon My Dust
after so many decades
my ashes forgotten
in a file cabinet
in a lawyer's office
while they waited
for some damn man
to bury me right!

 

On Dorothy Parker by the Men She Didn't Marry

Take me or leave me;
or, as is the usual
order of things,
both.

We're her legions of lovers
between books and suicides
dogs and drinking binges
our beloved Mrs. Parker
we loved her quips
her humor, sex
but we weren't enough
never enough.

Charlie made her laugh
cub reporter, budding playwright
a married playboy
knocked her up
and soon ended up
married for life
to a sweeter member
of the Round Table—
actress Helen Hayes.

Seward was rich
heir to tobacco shops
later a bookstore
and political magazines
he fell for Dottie
followed her like a pup
showered her with gifts
paid off her debts
marketed her work
took her to Europe
made her life better
until he didn't anymore.

John was handsome
tall, an aristocrat
a corporate man
of inferior intellect
(just her type)
of course he cheated
heartbreakers all.

I require three things in a man:
he must be handsome, ruthless,
and stupid.

We were all just flashes
in Mrs. Parker's pan
we drank too much
we had serious issues
depressions, blackouts
divorces and breakups
ulcers, liver lapses—
a madman's cocktail.

Dorothy Parker kept pace
a wise woman
in a man's world
writing truths about America
prosperity and mediocrity
her keen perceptions
of a self-indulgent era
a record for all time
a classic writer
whiskey straight

too tough to out talk
to live with
to love.

 

Marguerite Duras by Her Last Lover
(Yann Andréa )

Here I am,
as if I had fallen
out of a garbage can.

The kind of quote she gave
in interviews, famous, funny
an alcoholic, trashed
broken down body, wasted
the years we were in love
not lovers, I preferred men
four decades younger
I was 28, a grad student
and she was drunk
when I called her up
one of the many fans
in the cult of Duras
formed around her novels
on the tedium and gloom
of marriage the acrimony
of mellowing love
the tension between people
alcoholism and eroticism
the French youth mad
for her, a drug
I couldn't live without.

A writer is a foreign land.

That first time I called
we talked and talked and
she said I should come visit
I slept in her son's room
for the next sixteen years
in the old hotel by the sea
in her big house in the country
working on her movies
drinking and talking
dancing and I never left
her side unless carousing
the clubs and casinos.

She was always writing
drunk, drinking
red wine by the case
whiskey from a flask
always at her side
drunk and writing
late into the night.

I kept vigil
when she lay in hospital
in a hopeless coma
more than once
she revived, writing
and drinking
despite her cirrhosis
her failing liver.

I took care of her
I took dictation
while she wrote
book after book
on the inner shadow
the secret archives
of her most secret self.

The more I write
the less I exist.

 

Mickey J. Corrigan writes poetry and pulpy fiction. Her work has appeared in literary journals and books from small publishers in the US, UK, and elsewhere. The unpublished collection Whiskey Straight Women includes poetry biographies of well-known women writers whose lives were soaked in whiskey and ink.