Ferling Ends Up in the Cemetery:Four Key West Poems by Ferlinghetti

Done Wrong
[Writ at Heritage House, Key West Republic, March 26, 1994]

She calls me from a pay phone
outside of a filling station
outside of Paris Texas
I can hear the countrywestern singer
on an old car radio
singing She Done Me Wrong
I’m calling to tell you I done you wrong honey
she sings out to me on the phone
and hangs up
I rush out of the filling station office
and find her just escaping
the phone booth
we throw our bodies ’round each other
and live unhappily ever after



Three Key West Poems
[Writ in Key West, March 28, 1994]

#1
Great breakfast at Pepe’s …
Over-age beachboy
in broken down running shoes
seats me in a booth
In comes a couple of Miami bimbas
in pink shorts pink sunglasses
and pink breasts
the latter very prominent in very
pointed bras
The beachboy steps back a bit
and seats them at the next table
fanning himself as he walks away
They study the menu
no doubt looking for fried shark
And I am a camera
fixing them in the emulsion
of my eternity

#2
Key West’s cemetery …
A total of seven stone angels therein
The small ones like cherubs
with pathetic little wings
which couldn’t possibly
carry a soul away
One big beautiful white angel
with the end of one folded wing
broken off
I think of Thomas Wolfe’s stone angel
And of “a stone a leaf an unfound door”
Still unfound
forevermore

#3
And there is a great plaster laughing figure
Standing on a raised tomb
His head too large for his body
and his left hand pressed to his stomach
as if he had a sharp pain or were just about
to double over with mad
uncontrollable laughter
He has a weird grin on
his stoney face
With his foot on the head of his son
resting just below
I hear a faint crying
from a hundred years ago