Poetry Pop Up: Grace Cavalieri

Big Mama Thornton

Credit: Cuffed Frays, 2001, Argonne House Press

Last time I saw her

she wasn’t so big. Actually

she was downright skinny,

singing the final time

in Washington, D.C.

Backstage she drank a

quart of milk

mixed equal parts with

gin—

Seagrams, she told me.

Then she got the idea.

Could I contact the Seagrams

people and then she could

advertise for them and

they’d like her for

drinking a full quart a day—their gin.

I said no, I didn’t

think so, and I didn’t

think the milk people

would like the commercial so much

either. She still felt bad

about Elvis stealing “Hound Dog,”

The way he did, even though

she was much too much of a lady to say so.

Once she talked about it, long ago,

before she started milk with gin.

I guess the drink left a

sweet taste in her mouth.

Grace and friend/photo by Joanna Tillman

Grace Cavalieri is the author of poetry books and chapbooks and several produced plays. Her latest book is Other Voices, Other Lives, a compendium of poetry, plays and interviews (Alan Squire Press). Her most recent play is “ Calico and Lennie” (Theatre for the New City, NYC 2017), one piece of a three-part bill with plays by Langston Hughes and Luigi Pirandello. She celebrates 40 years on public radio in 2017, with “The Poet and The Poem” now recorded at The Library of Congress. She has four children, four grandchildren, and now is a great- grandmother.