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Hold the Knife This Way

The lady director in pink slacks, straw hat
& cowboy boots would say:

Hold the knife this way & make sure
we can see that lovely meat hook

Ida Lupino, hard-boiled queen of the B movies,
Bogie's girl in High Sierra,

so convincing as a convict, a gangster moll,
a neurotic.

Pioneering director, screenwriter, master
of the camera angle,
the 'social-message' movie.

Ballsy gal everyone liked her, the whole crew

But she didn't like being called 'hard luck' Lupino,
though she was, taking projects

to keep her actor-husband Howard Duff working
(who never quite gave up
the bachelor life).  

When she was old, she would stand in her garden,
& spray her neighbors with a hose.

As a critic once said (of her acting): 

Miss Lupino goes crazy about as well
as it can be done

back to issue

Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. For some years, she was a teacher and counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.