Upon Hearing That Among Marilyn Monroe’s Personal Effects

Complete Title: Upon Hearing That Among Marilyn Monroe’s Personal Effects Found After Her Death Was a Signed Photograph From Albert Einstein Inscribed With the Words “With Respect and Love and Thanks”

John Hodgen


Had they come together, beaker and bombshell,
like two asteroids meeting, like some big bang,
had they fallen for each other like twin Niagaras,
or perched like two cheesecakes on the Hollywood sign,
we all would have studied the sweet science of love,
shouted Eureka instead of Oh, God,
bliss would have blossomed above every bus stop,
until every man’s hair stood up straight and unkempt,
and each woman’s dress lifted up in the street.

All things are relative, theoretically,
and the stars simply wait to be named and adored,
but if there exists and alternative universe,
Alamogordo remembered or Paramount dreamed,
where God throws His dice in the crapshoot of love,
where blondes prefer gentlemen, where physics comes easy,
perhaps they are married, a nuclear family,
their children in labcoats and abnormal jeans,
Marilyn knee-deep in emotional postulates,
Albert all smiles, like the MGM lion, midriff bared,
their energies balanced in motion and light, E=MC2.