Vistas & Byways Fall 2015

  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Fiction >
      • State Birds of the South
      • Two Characters in Search of an Exit
      • Selling Dreams
      • Pacific Standard Time
      • Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
    • Nonfiction >
      • I Slept through 9-11
      • Passages
      • Detroit Welcome
      • On the Road
      • It's Been Forty Years
      • El Batey
      • Over the Rainbow
      • Motherhood
      • Not My War
      • Hidden Child
      • Nocturne
    • Poetry >
      • Death Gets a Makeover
      • Arachnophobia
      • Love Letter to a Poetess
      • Marilyn Monroe Syndrome
      • Or Maybe . . .
      • Dust to Dust
      • Morning Meditation
      • Next
      • Someone
      • A Dead Husband
      • Remembrances of the Second War
      • Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
      • White Hand Waving
      • Evening in Paris/Home in LA
    • Bay Area Stew >
      • Behind the Green Door
      • The Real San Francisco
      • Top Dog
      • At Home with the Homeless
      • Seeing Pacifica Beach
    • Inside OLLI >
      • An Interview with Sarah Broderick, Instructor
      • Star
      • Polar Bear Sighted on Golden Gate Bridge
      • Sister Theresa and the Evil Patrol
      • Wolfgang
      • The Making of a Flarf Poem
      • Ruminations on Rutabagas
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE
  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Fiction >
      • State Birds of the South
      • Two Characters in Search of an Exit
      • Selling Dreams
      • Pacific Standard Time
      • Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
    • Nonfiction >
      • I Slept through 9-11
      • Passages
      • Detroit Welcome
      • On the Road
      • It's Been Forty Years
      • El Batey
      • Over the Rainbow
      • Motherhood
      • Not My War
      • Hidden Child
      • Nocturne
    • Poetry >
      • Death Gets a Makeover
      • Arachnophobia
      • Love Letter to a Poetess
      • Marilyn Monroe Syndrome
      • Or Maybe . . .
      • Dust to Dust
      • Morning Meditation
      • Next
      • Someone
      • A Dead Husband
      • Remembrances of the Second War
      • Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
      • White Hand Waving
      • Evening in Paris/Home in LA
    • Bay Area Stew >
      • Behind the Green Door
      • The Real San Francisco
      • Top Dog
      • At Home with the Homeless
      • Seeing Pacifica Beach
    • Inside OLLI >
      • An Interview with Sarah Broderick, Instructor
      • Star
      • Polar Bear Sighted on Golden Gate Bridge
      • Sister Theresa and the Evil Patrol
      • Wolfgang
      • The Making of a Flarf Poem
      • Ruminations on Rutabagas
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE

Evening in Paris/Home in LA
by Mary Heldman


A long time ago: “Evening in Paris,”
The perfume in the fancy blue bottle
On top of the bathroom counter in our house in LA
You used it in little economical dabs
If you and Dad went somewhere dressy.
 
After my bath, I’d gently, reverently, nudge the stopper from the bottle
And inhale . . . I thought . . . the elegance of Paris,
And pretend I was all grown up and
Living in luxury with my very own Paris in a bottle.
The doldrums of midtown LA long gone.

Maybe the label said “Soir de Paris,” but I think you called it “Evening in Paris.”
You were never pretentious,
And besides, you didn’t know French.

The ubiquitous Web informs:
“Evening in Paris” was discontinued in 1969, but re-launched in 1992 after being re-
orchestrated.

For sure you’d have laughed:
What does that even mean, to re-orchestrate a perfume?
Pretentious, like the deconstructed and drizzle-infused, bloated vapor
Served to foodies.

And what’s more . . .
Now, all these years later, I learn that “Paris” was sold at Woolworths!
Yes, that revered, fragrant, curvaceous, cobalt-blue bottle
Gracing our bathroom counter
Sold at a dime store,
Long ago, in LA

But long before I could tell you my discovery,
You got sick and died.
Long ago, in LA

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