The Quadrangle Poem by Peter Verbica

Callas dragged her hand in the water.
It was the Mediterranean, so not too cold.

Pearly razorfish, thorn-backed rays
and parrot fish swam silently
over the seashells beneath her.

"Aristo, " as she called him, like to show
that he could sail even a small dingy.

It brought him back
to when he was a boy,

before the yachts,
the windfall of tobacco trades
and arguments with Rainier
over control of casinos.

To the days of
his mother's wood block
of phyllo dough, chopped nuts
and cinnamon.

And the regaling
of his grandmother's silence
as she wrapped sticky rice
with grape leaves.

Before his aunts and uncles
were burned alive in a church.

And, though his parents lost
everything to the Turks,
he was still
the son of Socrates.

And there was comfort in that.

The press liked the triangle:
Jackie, with her odd manner of speech,
and the two glittering Greeks.

But, on the level, it was really a quadrangle
because of Caroline Lee,
the sister time tries to forget —
though she outlives them all.

In the middle of this geometric shape,
the ghost of the Black Jack
eats a sandwich on a card table.

The man with a big heart,
a series of bad bets and a love
for whiskey.

Years later,
with John and Robert gone,
the widow with the fisheye sunglasses
was free to roam.

In a Swiss hospital,
she had the tattoo of poverty removed
from her forehead
by the finest doctor she could find.

No doubt the muscle of money
helped both Bouviers ignore
the stink of fat cigars and too-tight swim trunks.

Meanwhile, the public mourned for
Maria's supernatural voice,
the one which punched holes
in the acoustic ceilings of music halls

and pounded finishing nails
into the Twentieth Century
like a powerful hammer.

Part of me wonders
if when it was reduced to a whisper,
that the woman who loved horses
snuck by the convalescing singer
and into the Tycoon's arms.

Of course, he had been plotting all along.

What else could a man do
who had access to everything.

All of this was auctioned off
in 1998 and 2017, and I was there,
observing.

The Cartier watch, the childlike painting
of Stas and Chuck,
the famous speeches, black veil,
and engraved toothbrushes.

To each conspiring photographer
who caught it all,
even the picture with the Pope,

should we thank you
for the artful and poignant illusions

or just bust you in the chops.

["The Quadrangle" first appeared in the Sunspot Literary Journal,2019]