[for Bette Davis who cared about what she was doing
past all comprehension, a great actress because
she wanted it that way]
[Bette Davis looking back sarcastically much later on at a proposed studio name change for her: "Bettina Davies? Oh, PLEASE..."]
maybe she was like some improbable mouthy flower
exotic beyond a neighborhood of weeds born to please,
transplanted by the vagary of a wind
to a vegetable patch, a platinum vacuous backlot
Im an orchid she insists
don't turn me into mashed potatoes
chicken feed
and there she is up on the big screen
bigger somehow than the screen
than any role she ever played
disconcerting as all get-out
the sand in the oyster
and the pearl at the same time
you thought you knew her
but later...
who was ever like her before
her eyes like immense beacons sweeping
dry-eyed weeping
or like a doll's eyes watching
a doll's eyes that can never close
awake or asleep
a fixed something more than a little spooking
you gauging something
but you don't know what
like she sees satin ghosts over your shoulder
and is appraising them or sharing an expensive
joke at your expense or theirs with herself
so that you are uncomfortable
in your theater seat
despite the plush velvet
even at home
in the safety of your apartment
living room with your own sofa cushions
you wonder what it is that
incandescence
was she from Mars
another era, radioactive?
was she made of snow
and then the snow caught on fire
but its still permafrost
what is this element anyway
one we never learned in school
Bette with an e
so often imitated
what were they imitating then
they couldn't know
we didn't know you really
a few mannerisms
the makeup caking in the end
emphatically deep wrinkles
shrunken, still in State
you fought on
not to be the same
apple in the bunch
of apples
they thought you were rotten
you just didn't want to be
small potatoes
but that isn't it either, is it
but the soul
staring us out of countenance
out of ourselves
who could know
a kind of largesse masquerading as temper,
temperament
a voice like an ever crisp autumn writ large near rasping
kind of raspberry coloured
eyes of iris blue
wasted on black and white film
the voice again
etching itself into the mind
like the phonograph record
you think its scratched
something in you is irritated past endurance
change the record somebody
no wait, don't you say a little restless in your armchairs
nobody else can sound that way
like topaz speaking
so that Melodrama
slinks away, outdone;
unable to fend.
deeply engraved.
her own medal
in the end
mary angela douglas 23 march 2017
