Brant Lyon

 MAE WEST CONSULTS THE MEDIUMS OF LILY DALE

Diamond Lil’s sparkle never dimmed until

well past her prime, still refracting immortal

light as she dispensed ghostwritten advice

re: ESP and spiritualism, or the rejuvenating

virtues of bottled water, enemas and colonics,

positive thinking, indirect lighting, fantasy

and sex, that gave to the lie that goodness

had nothing to do with it.

Ravenswood, even the beach house, kept

shuttered from the sun’s pernicious rays,

devoid of houseplants she claimed consumed

oxygen, but two un-housebroken macaques

given free range for monkeyshines, the muralled

walls depicting otherworldly golden phalluses,

disembodied testicles floating in air as though

trumpets in a seance, the opulence of her boudoir,

And all her other worldly goods would be to her

but a splendid pharaoh's tomb--vainglorious

dowry for no afterlife--were she unable to make contact,

re-bond, with her mother and father on the Other Side.

Mae made that long, anxious journey from Hollywood

to Lily Dale and sat in silent awe in darkened

psychomanteums and parlors, tables tipping uncannily

on their sides, or in charmed frenzy, danced,

An eerie rapping on the wall, raising the platinum

hairs on the back of her specter-white neck.

But of all the mediums that beckoned forward

the dearly departed from Summerland to that

‘thin place’, it was Jack Kelly, from whom sex appeal

oozed like ectoplasm, she had come up to see

(and not the other way around), and open her

heart to invite spirit inside as he cast a beam

Of supernal light on which she passed over to meet

the undead--Jack’s gaze piercing through the veil

of disbelief or doubt, of disappointment,

unfathomed hurt, before the message delivered

from a somewhere she had long known but never

seen came through as he looked her straight

in the eye and asked with the innocence

of a child, "May I come to you?