David Kirby

Skinny-Dipping with Pat Nixon

               “That blonde kissed me,” says Barbara, and I say, “The minx!”
but don’t add that she kissed me, too, then said she and her friend
                             are going to pull their clothes off and jump
in the pool, and do I want to join them, and I say yeah, kind of,
               only Barbara’s in the next room, just-kissed herself, or about to be,

               and I’m in enough trouble already: we’re at a party following
the National Book Festival, and while nobody told me
                             not to speak out against the war in Iraq, it’s hard to pretend
nothing is going on as surveillance helicopters whack-whack
               over the poetry tent, and some of the peace marchers have

               even plopped down in front of me, so I promise them, if elected,
(1) to bring the troops home, (2) to rebuild the city of New Orleans
                             exactly as it was before Hurricane Katrina, and (3) to prevent
or at least minimize helicopter flyovers during all future
               poetry readings, and now my host won’t talk to me, and all because

               I have put a single raisin of doubt on the government’s snowy
white cake of confidence. At the opening ceremony
                             the night before, four writers spoke, but they all said
the same thing, which is that, if you work at it and keep smiling,
               everything will be fine. And at the dinner afterward, I’m talking

               to a publishing executive who wants to know how I liked what
the writers said, and I say I about half liked it, and he says
                             what does that mean, and I say I like all that Abraham
Jefferson Jackson stuff, all the boilerplate about America the beautiful,
               the sunlit, the flouride-coated, the vitamin-enriched,

               but where’s bad America, America the weird, the one that says,
“No! in thunder,” to use Melville’s description of Hawthorne,
                             although I suspect it was himself he was talking
about when he said that, and the publisher keeps saying what do
               you mean, I don’t get it, and I say doesn’t every play or opera

               or TV show you like have something dark in it, something
bug-eyed and scary, and he says why would I watch anything like that,
                             and I say okay, doesn’t every great artist walk
the line between the sublime and the horrible the way Johnny Cash
               heel-to-toes it along the narrow thread between right and wrong,

               between the love of a woman he’s known it seems like forever
and some nameless dance-hall pussy, though I don’t use
                             the p word, and the executive says why would
anyone write that way, I don’t get it, what are you talking about,
               what do you mean. And then this morning, at the White House

               itself, there were four more speakers, but these weren’t even
writers, because if you have too many writers at a book festival,
                             people get the wrong idea. So there were two TV
personalities and two basketball players, but they said the same thing
               the writers did the night before: life’s good, people are good,

               God loves you. Yet every portrait in the White House
is of a failure: Warren Harding, with his gang of unscrupulous shysters;
                             LBJ, who went overnight from world’s greatest
president to world’s worst; even poor Eleanor Roosevelt, with
               her unfaithful husband and ugly buck teeth. But the portrait

               I come back to again and again is of Pat Nixon, so dignified,
so sad, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes pained,
                             her narrow chin almost trembling. You weren’t good
enough for me when I was younger, Pat; I thought you scrawny
               and neurotic, and you were married to that evil turd Richard.

               But now I’m the same age you are in the portrait, and I can see
how hard it was for you, how different it would have been
                             if you’d had a good marriage, a good man.
I would get in that pool with you, Pat; as the guests swirl, unseeing,
               you’d turn your back to me and wriggle out of

               your old-fashioned white undies, dive in and surface
where I wait, then throw your arms around my neck.
                             I brush your hair out of your eyes and glance down
at your breasts, though I’m too shy to touch them.
               The guests nibble gingered beef and crab-stuffed cherry tomatoes,

               and the host pours another drink, a stiff one this time.
The sky over Washington fills with chrysanthemums, their light dappling
                             the water and our pale skin as they flash and boom like bombs
or fireworks, though we can’t tell which. Kiss me, Pat:
               heal me, heal the world. You’ve never been more lovely.

DAVID KIRBY is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University. His next collection is The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems, to be published by Louisiana State University Press in 2007. For more information, go to www.davidkirby.com.

“Skinny-Dipping with Pat Nixon” appears in our Summer 2006 issue.

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