Henry’s Elegy For Shelley Winters

Her big fat ass swimming upside-down
inside the Poseidon
like a baby whale,

this is, of course, years and years
after she had lost
that blonde bomb shell look

that gave men erections
and lesbians latherations.
She bedded famous actors,

Burt Lancaster, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable,
William Holden, Marlon Brando.
Later she played a grandmother on Roseanne.

But, when they torched a hole in the stern
to pull out the survivors
the hole would have been too small for her,

too small for her beauty and grace
but small enough
for the rest of the human race.