A Grown-Ups' Dinner Party Without Woody Allen Poem by robert fort

The Big C enters the room furtively,
a minor reference
in quiet conversation
but the lurid C’s too much.
The party ears perk
as if sex were the subject
or dangling hanged corpses,
child abuse, a death in the family,
Elvis sighted on the balcony.
The beginning of the end
of party conviviality
a hush to push back air
room for the sorry details
of an old illness,
an illness so common –
treated matter-of-factly
among doctors today –
still enthralls the well,
like the plague,
peasants on the guillotine,
space shuttle failures,
anything, everything, but
good party fodder
for singles in their fifties,
straining for an up night
to diversify the portfolios
of flat mid-life worlds.
I say “speak of sex, books,
films, Proust, art, music,
the goings on of Woody Allen,
Woody & Sun Mi,
Woody & Mia,
Woody & Diane Keaton,
Woody & his right hand,
Woody & Truffaut,
Woody & Bergman,
Woody & Fellini,
Woody & Preston Sturges,
Woody & Hitchcock,
Woody & The New Yorker,
Woody & Woody Guthrie,
Woody & Twain,
Woody & Mel Allen,
Woody & anybody,
anything, anywhere,
just not the big C
whom I met
danced on the toes of,
& left alone
in the middle of the floor
staring at its pumps.
Let’s party.”