Some Days I Feel Like Janet Leigh

Some days I feel like Janet Leigh in Touch of Evil —
I wake up, sunny and blond, but by the time midnight
rolls around I've been hijacked by Akim Tamiroff's
greasy thugs, shot up with heroin, framed for murder,
and I'm out cold in a border town jail. I didn't kill
Akim, of course, it was Hank Quinlan — drunk, overweight
Orson Welles — who for thirty-odd years as sheriff
has been framing creeps for crimes they maybe did. Enter
Mike Vargas, tall handsome Mexican cop — Charlton
Heston with a weird little mustache and a dark tan
from a can. "You don't talk like a Mexican," Welles
says to Heston, which speaks to me, because talking
like a Mexican could solve any number of roadside hells
I am currently running away from — well, walking.

Barbara Hamby
Five Points
Volume 9, Number 3

Copyright © 2006 by Five Points,
Georgia State University.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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