Celebrity

Four thousand girls are crying out in love. 

They faint upon each other, mouths agape, 

Flushed cheeks concealed by fists clenched tight as stones, 

Above a sea of sloshing poodle skirts. 

It’s February, 1964, 

And no one can believe it’s really them 

Who now descend the rattling airplane stair. 

My cousin was no different. Home from college, 

She went out waterskiing with some friends, 

When, halfway through the afternoon, she’s told, 

In whispers, by another girl, the guy 

With brazen skin, high cheekbones, and black hair 

Is actually a movie star. And though 

She did not recognize the name she heard, 

She waited for his turn, and, as he bobbed 

Beside the boat, straining to squeeze his foot 

Into the rubber foreboot of the ski, 

She slipped, as if overcome by heat, as if 

By charming accident, into the water 

And rose back to the surface through his arms. 

We look upon them, starlets in dark glasses, 

Stringy haired rockers with their graven faces, 

The one in glittering corset, bathed in light, 

Whose face repeats itself from screen to screen. 

Their presence in the world alone suffices 

To change the feel of stage or store or diner, 

To make a barren tarmac seem anointed.

So it was, lodged in Dublin for the summer, 

I traced the crooked streets back home from Mass, 

Home from the marbled chapel’s somber dark, 

Where I’d received the Christ upon my tongue, 

Consumed his flesh, become a part of him. 

And there, out in the light, beside the shop 

That specialized in cappuccinos, stood 

In worn-out jeans and floppy denim jacket 

None other than Jack Black—himself a film star 

Or close enough. And when I met his eyes 

He blew the fanned-out hairs above his brow 

As if to say he’d tied one on last night— 

But hadn’t everyone, hadn’t we all? 

I nodded from across the road, passed on, 

My mind ablaze, until I turned the key 

And found my roommates idle in the kitchen. 

One stood by the electric kettle, watching, 

His hands slack on the counter with his mug. 

There, in the bare walls of the room, we heard 

The slow and mounting rumble of its boil, 

The sigh and wheeze of steam about to rise. 

And then, their sleepy eyes stirred by my call, 

I told them with what words the mind could summon 

Of that strange meeting from which I’d returned.