Aphrodite Metropolis (1)

By Kenneth Fearing 1902–1961 Kenneth Fearing

"Myrtle loves Harry"—It is sometimes hard to remember a thing like that,

Hard to think about it, and no one knows what to do with it when he has it,

So write it out on a billboard that stands under the yellow light of an "L" platform among popcorn wrappers and crushed cigars,

A poster that says "Mama I Love Crispy Wafers So."

Leave it on a placard where somebody else gave the blonde lady a pencil moustache, and another perplexed citizen deposited:

"Jesus Saves. Jesus Saves."

One can lay this bundle down there with the others,

And never lose it, or forget it, or want it.

"Myrtle loves Harry."

They live somewhere.

Kenneth Fearing, "Aphrodite Metropolis (1)" from Collected Poems of Kenneth Fearing. Published by Random House, 1940. Reprinted by the permission of Russell & Volkening, Inc., as agents for the author. Copyright © 1994 by Jubal Fearing and Phoebe Fearing.

Source: The Collected Poems of Kenneth Fearing (Random House Inc., 1940)

Biography

Kenneth Fearing, a well-known proletarian poet of the 1930s, a pulp-magazine writer with several pseudonyms, and a Chicago and New York publicity and editorial writer, turned to writing “psycho-thrillers” in the 1940s and 1950s. His fourth novel The Big Clock (1946) achieved much popularity and was released as a film by Paramount in 1947. Although some scholars now consider Fearing’s main contribution to be in the genre of . . .

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