John Wieners

John Wieners was born in Milton, Massachusetts, in 1934. He died in 2002.

CHARITY BALLS

I had a fellowship, but lived poorly
On slices of pizza.
Later, a career of washing lettuce;
but I have always been the same.
It's a question of acquiring a mastery of tone
Beneath the crystal chandeliers and champagne
on a glass table top.
At the age of five I thought Scarlett O'Hara
a fictional character. It was not until
The age of forty-eight I knew she was real.
Old clothes and bedroom slippers and a scarf
Wrapped around her head
In low cost tenement housing.
She began talking about my writing
And her sex life.
I'm curt by nature and dolorous.
But I knew if I worked hard I'd eventually make it.

DOLL

How many loves had I
in young boy's bed,
at Humarock, or Provincetown's
Cape Cod, under sweating summer sun,

after Land's End, before their interruption.
How many loves had I?

in discourse by firelight, after highballs
to records of Marlene Dietrich and Cole Porter,
how many loves had I?

in Swampscott flat, or Beacon Hill house,
Beacon Street garage or Fiedler overpass,
how many loves had I?

How many loves, in Annandale
before payment or threat, in the Public Gardens
or Fifth Avenue park, how many loves-

None, none, none at all.