David Duncombe
Look-alike
She was always in the local papers,
blotting lipstick on the mayor’s cheek at a gala,
or pouting ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’
to some small-town corporation Jack.
Her hit was a make-up commercial:
‘Insist on the real thing, girls, just like me!’
And it paid better being Marylin Monrow
than plain Renee Clarke, though not as much
as a living or even a dead movie queen.
She’d started out as an awkward, normal girl,
halfway between cheek and embarrassment,
a giggling impression of a younger sister
to Norma Jean. Then she stopped being herself
at a ‘Let’s All Be Famous’ parade.
She didn’t win that day, but Renee kept going.
A swelling here, a tuck discreetly there
and all the blonde she could bleach made it hard,
until the phoney accent, to tell the difference.
There was enough of Marilyn for strangers
to call out, except they knew she didn’t belong
outside the cinema in a provincial town.
In bed with someone excited by a dream,
she’s still the star, but plays the part of someone
like Renee, taken and loved for herself.
Page(s) 13
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