When Liz Met Dick

Dick was Anthony to her

Cleopatra — theatrically

gripping his coffee cup,

playing at shaky hands.

She thought he was all theatre.

She: all Hollywood to him.

He made her laugh so hard

she smudged Cleopatra’s

Kohl eyeliner.

Dick had a wife back home,

Dick had a Copacabana dancer

waiting for him back at his hotel.

She had a husband, and little Liza,

sitting on Dick’s lap, pig-tailed,

white cotton dress.

Liz was cleavage draped in

silk. He, a hero in a leopard dress.

“Only the most real, true men

can get away with wearing skirts”,

she told him, toying playfully

with a lock of her hair.

One on screen kiss silenced

all back and forth banter.

Rome, so far from Eddie Fisher.

The Pope called it erotic vagrancy.

Still, the show went on. Fanfare,

charioteers, butch warriors,

pyramids, a thousand white

doves. Liz and Dick atop

Arabian horses, both

in gold robes, brooding

over a fake desert.

Later, in a pink Cadillac out back

between takes: the deal, sealed.