Poems by Lee Herrick ​

Marilyn Monroe Sings in Korea, 1954                 
 
                                        
For four days in February, in a northern town
known for its ice fishing festival, Marilyn Monroe
sang to the troops in a tight purple dress.
No shawl, no jacket, just heels and the heat
of her band behind her: piano, drums, sax.
All possibility and sex, she strutted and sang
“Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.”
Men howled like broken helicopter blades.
The writing on the kick drum said, “Anything Goes.”
In a dream, the generals believed it to be true.
That bombs could drop on civilians and no one
would care. That killing 35,000 people in days
is not a massacre and they would not be haunted
forever. But the worst typhoon in decades thawed
and revealed a dead girl’s arm, her hand found
sticking out from the cold ground of a mass grave.
If you believe what’s written on the kick drum,
you can look away because anything goes,
any violation goes, any deportation goes,
you can make your own laws and absolve
yourself, distracted, because it’s what we do here,
look away, as long as an icon dances on stage,
her diamond earrings flashing like ice.





To Eat at the Table of the Host      Lee Herrick
 
            After the movie Parasite
 
We've all needed someone to live.
To feed us, nurse us, to want us,
to keep us from our fatal allergy.
In one scene, we fake our name.
In another, we angle for free wifi,
open windows for free fumigation.
In one scene, Da-song's self-portrait
of madness or the basement dweller.
The young boy knows, he isn't crazy!
Haven't we all needed someone 
to understand us and our wild idea?
In the basement, a husband in hiding.
In the stairwell, a blunt rock to the head.
Parasitism is the most common survival
strategy in the world. Of the eight million
species on Earth, almost half are parasitic.
We invent and reinvent ourselves, a new
name, day by day, line by line, to make
believe, to make belief where there was
none, to eat at the table of the host.
Invention is a survival skill.
You be the tutor, she'll be the maid.
He'll be the rich man's driver, she'll be
Jessica, only child, Illinois, Chicago.
Haven't we all needed a song to become
who we need to be? Corporate parasite
hypocrite socialite. Don't the wealthy
feed off the poor, drained of their energy,
made to wait longer, search harder,
fold more pizza boxes per hour?
In one scene, I could be everyone and no one,
in love with the violent end, the murderer
stuck in the basement of his own making.
Someone new will come buy this house.
Someone new will tend to the yard.
You be the mythic architect.
I'll be the dark-skinned farmer, surviving.
 
 
Pub. in Poetry Goes to the Movies (Pacific Coast Poetry Series/Beyond Baroque Books, 2025).

Lee Herrick lives with his family in Fresno where he served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He is now California Poet Laureate and first to be invited to continue for a second two-year term.  He teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the author of four books of poems, In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems (Gunpowder Press); Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire.  Lee was born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant.

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