for love of an armadillo

8/14/2019 For Love of an Armadillo

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For Love

of an

rmadillo

Didi MenendezJeremy Baum


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For Love

of an

rmadillo

Poems by

Didi Menendez

Illustrated by

Jeremy Baum


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Published by

GOSS 183::CASA MENENDEZ

www.mipoesias.com

Bloomington, Illinois

Copyright 2008-2009

Didi Menendez and Jeremy Baum


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Decicated to our friend John Korn.


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CONTENTS

Armadillo 1

Armadillo 3

Shadowbox 5

Armadillo and the Hollywood Starlets 7

Let s Dance 11

Armadillos Shoes 13

Conquest 15

Armadillo s Kisses 17

Lives 19

Armadillo and Andalucia 21

The Conquistador 25

Armadillo s Dice 27

More 31

Armadillo s Armor 33


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ArmadilloArmadillo


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One day I woke up

and there was thearmadillo filling

up the arroyo

I have become.

Sometimes the

armadillo shells

out a ballad.

There is an

armadillo burrowedinto my chest.

My breasts

have made way

to accommodate

the armadillo.

I am not sure how

the armadillo found

his way into my life.

ARMADILLO

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ShadowboxShadowbox


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Armadillo loves insects.

He collects them eversince he can remember.

Armadillo has a wide varietyof butterflies and mothsnot to mention exoticspecies such as the

Mexican Fruit Flyand the Africanized Honey Bee.

Armadillo has acquiredhis collection from his travelsabroad and through his many

incarnations.

Armadillo loves bugs almost as muchas Hollywood Starlets.

In the 20s Armadillo fell head over heelsfor Greta Garbo. He followed her

everywhere until one dayGreta had to tell himI want to be alone.

ARMADILLO AND THE

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HOLLYWOOD STARLETSIn the 30s Armadillo seduced Jean Harlow.

In the 40s it was Judy Garland.Although Judy was short and brunette,Armadillo cherished her.

In the 50s Doris Day wantedto be in the picture but Armadillosaid none of that and he left Hollywood

only to turn up in Las Vegas in the 60salong with the remains of the Rat Pack.

Armadillo hung out with Sinatra.When Armadillo was introduced to Mia Farrow,he thought his heart had stopped beating

and he was going to leave earth.

Armadillos heart survived the pixie like womanwho resembled his fast growing bug collectionand shared quiet moments with the starletwhile old blue eyes was belting a tune.

Armadillo followed her everywhereright into the 70s while she played oppositeof Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby.

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For the first time in his life Armadillo became jealous.

He was no competition for Woody Allenwho in a way was just another big cucarachaso he finally felt he must leave Mia foreverand followed a Monarch butterflyinto the next decade.

Armadillo was lost in the 80s.

He found himself lonelier than everand resorted to his ant farm for comfort.

He became enamoredwith new and never before seencreatures traveling near and far to find them

until one day he ended up here with meand here we are under each others microscopeuntil it is time to say Adios Armadillo.

ARMADILLO AND THE HOLLYWOOD STARLETS

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Lets DanceLets Dance


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Armadillo please take out

your dancing shoes.

Here is the polish.

How do you expect to

have an audience

unless you start tapping?

Where is the applause?

Shine those shoes please.

I will spit on them for you.

Armadillo you sure look snappy.

Come on Armadillo

Well play Benny Goodman

records and well mambo

with Xavier Cougat.

ARMADILLOS SHOES

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Ill knit you a sweater.

We can share a sandwich.

The coca-cola is chilling

in the ice box.

If you are really good, we can

Chattanooga Choo Choo.

After you are done with the tapping

and you are full of perspiration

I want to dance with you slow

under the drunken moon.

I want to have your drops of sweat

drop on my brow as if I did all the work.

I want to place my ear against

your heart so we can share the rattle.

I want you to kiss me Armadillo.

I want you to kiss me.

I want you to kiss me hard.

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ConquestConquest


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ARMADILLOS KISSES

Armadillo only kisses mewhen there is a full moon

or when it rains.

Sometimes we lay in bedand stare at the ceilings lamp.

Sometimes Armadillogives me a back rub.He places his bony fingersaround my neck and massagesaway the days thoughts.

Sometimes Armadilloputs his mouth near my ear

and whispers a poem hewrote on a napkin during lunch.

Besides these rare occasionswe hardly ever touch.We watch reruns ofAlias Smith and Jones instead.

We have a debate as towhy the main characterwas murdered by his girlfriend.

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Sometimes Armadillo comes upwith a better answer than mine.Sometimes I win the debate.

Sometimes we discuss who wasscarier Bella Lugosi or Boris Karloff?

Sometimes I make Armadillo dinner.His favorite is shellfish althoughI must be very careful never to servehim snails al ajillo because snailsremind him of his first love.

Tonight there will be a full moonand the weather channel is predicting rain.

Tonight Armadillo will put his boneyfingers around my neck and placehis other boney hand in the smallof my back and lean down and kissme first softly and then with emotionas if he has never kissed me underthe full moon or rain before and I

will pull him close to me so Ican feel everything that is hardabout Armadillo as if lifewere not hard enough.

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LivesLives


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My name is Andalucia.Some people call me Lucia.Some people call me Andy.Some people call me Lucie.Some people call me Loo Loo.Armadillo calls me Dominique.

He says I remind him of a nun.

Armadillo wears an armoreverywhere he goes.He even wears it to bed.

He said he got it when hewas a conquistador withPonce de Leon.

I told him I died atAuschwitz Birkenau.

He believed me.I believed him.

ARMADILLO AND

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That subject was closed.We never brought it up again.

I did not tell him aboutmy previous deaths.

They were all monstrousor tragic or incomprehensible

except for that one timewhen I died while making loveto a woman in Josephine Bonapartes

court and in a way I will have to putthat death on the inconvenience list.

I have died as a man.I have died as a woman.I have died as child.

I have died as a newborn.I have been a still death.

ANDALUCIA

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Armadillos name is not really Armadillo.I call him Armadillo because of theconquistador armor.

His real name may be Harry or Richard or Tom.I dont know because he never offered to tell me.I never asked.

I never ask Armadillo anything.He never asks me anything eitherexcept for the occasional whats for dinner?

I once served him picadilloand we could not stop laughingright into the next century.

Tonight we will watch tv.

ARMADILLO AND ANDALUCIA

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The Streets of San Francisco.Sanford and Son.The Jeffersons.The Carol Burnett Show.The Mary Tyler Moore Show.The Dick Van Dyke Show.The Ed Sullivan Show.The Andy Griffith Show.Bridget Loves Bernie.Love American Style.Mod Squad.Mannix.The Flying Nun.Nanny and the Professor.Marcus Welby M.D.Medical Center.

Welcome Back Kotter.The Odd Couple.Flipper.

We always watch reruns.This is what we understand best.

ARMADILLO AND ANDALUCIA

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The ConquistadorThe Conquistador


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ARMADILLOS DICE

Armadillo has gone for a walk.I never leave this house.

He says the armor is weighing him down.

A walk will do him well.

He will be gone for exactly one light year.

His walks are never longer than that.

I want to go back to when I was 14.

It was 1934 in Berlin and the streets

were bustling with traffic and it seemed

like everyone was in a hurry

to get somewhere, anywhereexcept no one was really moving.

I was headed to the Cinema to watch

the latest film from Hollywood.

I was a scrawny girl with auburn hair

and my face had not caught up to my nose.

I combed my hair like Ginger Rogers.

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My friends and I are headed inside

the dark smoky theatre where everyoneis taking a seat and standing up

and taking a seat and laughing and then crying

as if they were the ones in the film

until silence takes over with a hush.

Hush someone says and then another

and then another please hush please

be quiet, please be quiet, please.

This is when Armadillo returns from

his walk which took exactly

one light year which to a human equalsexactly 15 minutes and 7 seconds.

Armadillo looks over to me and

I know what he wants so I put

away my 14 year old self

and go back to being the nun-like

creature he understands and offer

to give his armor a rub.

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I rub him down.

I rub him down with precision.I use my own fingers in between

each groove between each crease.

I rub him down.

I rub him down until the weight

of every single moment in time

is released. He says to me:

I was in Las Vegas in 1965.

I was sitting by the roulette table.

Mia Farrow blew my dice

ARMADILLOS DICE

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MoreMore


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Armadillo sat at the foot of the bed.

He said it was time.

He said he had to leave now.

I wanted to tell him next time

we would do things different.

We would be born in the same decade.

We would have nine to five jobs.

We would meet at the Deli for lunch.

We would order the same sandwich.

Tuna on rye.

We would get married in a church with a steeple

We would have 2.3 children.

We would turn our taxes in ahead of time.We would be into sports, racquetball, basketball,

football, tennis and cheer for the same team.

ARMADILLOS ARMOR

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We would join the PTO.

We would be President of the PTO.

We would vacation in Lake Tahoe.

We would vote Republican.

We would buy a home in the suburbs.

We would celebrate our anniversary past 50 years.

We would be buried in the same cemetery

with matching headstones.

Once death was staring back at me,

I pulled a cobra from my mouth.

It slithered by my frost bitten toes.

My uterus gave birth to clots of baby parts.

My colon expelled Francis Bacon.

Garcia-Lorca stood in front of the firing squad.

I coughed up a frozen lake.

Che pointed a rifle to my left temple.I pulled the nails from my bloody fingers.

George Harrison handed me his guitar.

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Cole Porter sang Begin the Beguine.

Hedda Hopper jotted it all down.

Armadillo stood from the foot of the bed

and looked at the vast eternity above him.

Armadillo then looked below to the same eternity.

This was when he shed the armor and leftand this was when I found myself crying

at the top of my lungs as a woman held a breast to

my mouth and I, defenseless, suckled on to dear life.

ARMADILLOS ARMOR

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Didi Menendezis a cuban-bloodedAmerican artist, editor, publisher and

author. She lives in the middle of nowhere.

Jeremy Baumis an American artist

and illustrator. He lives in Pennsylvania.


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for love of an armadillo

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