Read the poem about Marilyn the Tortoise that everyone loved at the Marilyn Monroe 80th Birthday Bash at Brooklyn Reading Works in June of 2006.

It’s a real knock out, tour de force poem. You gotta hear Michele Madigan Somerville read it. Maybe she’ll read it again at the Poetry Punch group reading on November 15th at the Old Stone House. Here’s an excerpt but you can read the rest at Fresh Poetry, Michele’s blog.

In ’69 Marilyn the Tortoise, was bequeathed
to my brothers and me by our drug-dealing Cuban
superintendent who, running one step ahead of
the local Vice Squad, was forced to leave his French
Provincial sectional mustard velveteen
sofa and the largest RCA model television money
could buy. He packed up what he could
of his tight cellar dwelling in haste, pausing to leave his family
pet, Marilyn, behind. She lived her truncated reptilian
life in a roasting pan lined with gravel; she ate lettuce
when we thought to feed her and had little choice
but to shit where she ate. Thinking her dead, one day,
we discarded her. Little did we know, tortoises fly
in the face of time — almost as if death fails
to tunnel into the tender part of their living meat…(excerpt)