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It Could Have Happened Like This (for my friend Betty Zeoli)





It Could Have Happened Like This…



December, 1959.


Betty and Truman on opposite ends

of a lime green polyester couch

at a party in The Village,

nodding in angular bebop time

with an eyes-closed piano player

who danced a nervous shuffle in his pork-pie hat.





Capote yawned: “Betty my dear, do you think

that I should fly to Cannes with Jackie Kennedy?

Or take the train to see that bad boy in Kansas?”

Behind smudged glasses, his eyes strayed

as a muscled boy tangoed an empty tray through the crowd.





Betty kicked at him with a red pointy-toed shoe.

“Damn it, Truman, first fetch me another drink.

Two olives, lime twist and just a rumor of vermouth.”




Truman rubbed his sore ankle, rolled off the settee

and careened a rolling stumble across the room.


Martini in one hand, Old Crow and Lucky Strike in the other,

Capote returned, swayed and hiccuped back to her:

“Cannes or Kansas, Betty?”





Betty sipped in the smoky party, twirled the glass between her fingers,

“Kansas, Truman, Kansas. For a sensitive lad like you,

there’s far less trouble in the gray penitentiary.

Spend three weeks in France with this crowd,

it’ll come down to some damn fool Pomeranian prince

or pale, pathetic Truman.

You or he, betrayed and broken on

rough Roman cobblestones,

the shadows of the last pink sunset

falling in your cold, cold blood.”

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