How Could Norma Jean
be any other high school angel, unnoticed
in the back row, not enrolled
in pliant blond, not translated from angular childhood
once she found the appetite
in new-milk skin and that proficiency in the thrown-back
head,
in arms akimbo? She had to
amplify on schoolgirl, ingénue. And wouldn’t you agree
to alter and become that Playmate,
skirt blown north? Fidelity never flashed so white
a smile.
Praise that absolute waist, those thighs
that ripened and tired in Technicolor. But how could
she stay
at the party later,
sleepily crooning “Happy Birthday,” sewn into that
impossible gown?
Out on the rim of self-invention,
a stranger teases us one screen farther, Norma dissolved
to an eloquent
flicker, The End indistinct in black and white.
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