JOLSON & LOUIE
When I was a kid in Atlantic City
I wowed the old ladies on the beach
with my boy soprano: My Yiddishe Momme.
They glowed with affection and Coppertone.
*
Today — believe it — at poetry class,
simply because he’d been mentioned before,
I played some Louie: “Heebie Jeebies,”
“West End Blues,” and almost lost it
during that long extended golden
note at the end of “West End” — oh,
it’s okay for kids to see teacher weep
when there’s genius in the room.
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