Strange Blues: Poem Inspired by Edie Windsor

Hildy had strange blues I mean she had

some mighty strange blues after Janie died.

Hildy knew all about the blues—

death blues & love gone bad blues

no moneyfoodorliquor blues

homesick blues and Momma blues

Daddy blues and too old to tango blues

but these blues weren’t like those.

These were strange blues.


She was a stranger by law

to Janie said the judge,

calling her ‘The Deceased’.

They weren’t spouses. How could they be?

They were both women, each having 2 boobs

one pussy and no dick on the premises.

Thus there’d been no wedding no license no cake

no spouses and what about spice?

Hildy could still laugh but

Legal Strangers said the judge

pounding his gavel.

That’s what you are: A Legal Stranger.


That’s what gave Hildy the strange blues

for sure. She’d held Janie’s hand

‘til her spirit left her tired body

so how was she a stranger?  No, said the judge, not

a stranger; a Legal Stranger. Look it up.

So she did. Hildy looked under L and S in the big dictionary

in the living room and the paperback dictionary

in the kitchen with the cookbooks

and she looked under the catboxes and

in the bookshelves and in the drawers of

all four desks. (One for each grownup, one

for each kid. Intellectuals, friends would tease them.)

In every dictionary she turned to L and then to S.

but could not find Legal Strangers

which is why Hildy’s got these

strange blues tonight: real strange blues.


Get out your guitar

and strum the Legal Stranger Blues.

Betcha can’t. Betcha won’t.

O sure, you can play the Sam Cooke blues

The Ray Charles blues Aretha blues

Johnny Cash blues and

the Last of the Red Hot Momma Blues


but you and me, we don’t know any

Legal Stranger blues or any Legal Strangers,

only Strangers in a Strange Land

of judges, no spouses, no wives and no rights.


 


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Published on September 13, 2017 13:01
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