Judith Terzi
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The Flying Seventies
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest."
Jacques P flew over the velvet sofa in his living room.
Nimble Jacques. I flew like air express
from his Beverly Hills apartment. Red platform
shoes, mini-skirt. I thirty. Jacques fifty. There
for Chablis, parlez-vous, garlic mushrooms.
Before that, I saw Eldridge drive around Algiers,
take his children to the American Embassy.
Visits to British nurse Anne. Black Panthers
dated Canadian girls. The Embassy flew a Swiss
flag after '67. The Consul asked me to take Cleaver's
daughter to Paris, but I refused the press.
Lived with Rachid, my erstwhile harem master.
Met him at a Berkeley coffeehouse on Telegraph Ave.
We drove from L.A. to NY, France to Spain, Tangiers
to Algiers. When bobby pins showed up in our bed, I flew.
Missed the Casbah, couscous, merguez, brik,
jasmine nights, the white city. Rachid, beaucoup.
In Cuernavaca, I met Jerome at the Cuahnahuac
Instituto. That summer in Mexico City, my luggage
disappeared. Crawled into the empty stomach
of the bus to hunt. Then Nixon lost his baggage,
too, when I was in Guadalajara. The Consul––reassigned
from Algeria to Mexico––ripped the damage
off the wall. Waited for Geraldo's photo. I repeated
more Spanish, gorgeous teacher Raúl Camacho’s
sinuous, subjunctive sentences. Jerome revealed
his rectum in black and white glossy photos
at his pad in Laguna Beach. I flew out again.
South of the border, Pinochet played macho
"Who Can Fly?" from planes. In Burbank, Bert's dream
was a Vista Cruiser packed with kids and groceries.
After watching Fidel and Boumedienne
on the Didouche Mourad, main drag of Algiers,
rose petals flying through the air onto their tanks,
after peace-signing Panther revolutionaries––
no way was I going to settle in Burbank.
The divorce from Rachid was over. A freeway
overpass collapsed. I waited for the next quake.
Bio
Judith Terzi's poetry has most recently appeared in Alehouse Press, The Dirty Napkin, The New Verse News, Qarrtsiluni, Umbrella, Untitled Country Review, as well as in the Collaborative Issue of Poemeleon. The Road to Oxnard was published by Pudding House as a finalist of note in the 2009 chapbook competition. A new chapbook, Sharing Tabouli, will be released in 2011 (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Best of the Web Anthologies.