Last Tango in Paris by Elizabeth Knapp

Last Tango in Paris
 
I walked all over the streets of Paris,
searching for the ghost of Marlon Brando.
 
I wandered the Jardin du Luxembourg,
the seedy bits of La Pigalle,
down to the Quai d’Orléans,
 
where I found him shagging
the shadow of his former self.
 
This was back in 1972,
when the talk was short
and the sex was long.
 
Whatever he said that night,
it was lost in the moonlight
and in the uncanny sound
of a man’s mind cleaving.

He was so drunk,
I had to carry him home.

Elizabeth Knapp

Elizabeth Knapp is the author of The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 De Novo Poetry Prize. The recipient of the 2015 Literal Latté Poetry Award and the 2007 Discovered Voices Award from Iron Horse Literary Review, she has published poems in Best New Poets 2007, The Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and many other journals. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a PhD from Western Michigan University and is currently Associate Professor of English at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.