{"id":98349,"date":"2022-04-07T09:22:55","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=98349"},"modified":"2022-04-07T08:41:51","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T12:41:51","slug":"for-billie-holidays-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=98349","title":{"rendered":"“No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music..\u201d — Billie Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nIt’s her birthday today. <\/p>\n

Here is Frank O’Hara’s poem called “The Day Lady Died.” Notice that he doesn’t say her name. <\/p>\n

The Day Lady Died<\/big><\/p>\n

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
\nthree days after Bastille day, yes
\nit is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
\nbecause I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
\nat 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
\nand I don\u2019t know the people who will feed me<\/p>\n

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
\nand have a hamburger and a malted and buy
\nan ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
\nin Ghana are doing these days
\n I go on to the bank
\nand Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
\ndoesn\u2019t even look up my balance for once in her life
\nand in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
\nfor Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
\nthink of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
\nBrendan Behan\u2019s new play or Le Balcon or Les N\u00e8gres
\nof Genet, but I don\u2019t, I stick with Verlaine
\nafter practically going to sleep with quandariness<\/p>\n

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
\nLiquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
\nthen I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
\nand the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
\ncasually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
\nof Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it<\/p>\n

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
\nleaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
\nwhile she whispered a song along the keyboard
\nto Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing<\/p>\n

\n