Lines, November 2009 (by Mitch Sisskind)

 1.

Against all advice he opened 

A children’s furniture business;

He sold cribs, bassinettes, premium

Items such as car-shaped beds.

It was 1950. Ben Crane, Morrie Bayless,

None of them saw the bright future

For children’s furniture in the dawning

Baby boom. They said he was crazy,

But weathering the storm of expenses

That accompanies the start of a business

He began to make a very good living

And there came a night at Fritzl’s

When, having ordered finnan haddie,

He declared, ‘They said I was crazy

‘But I was crazy like a fox! Like a fox

‘I was crazy! In what manner of speaking

‘Was I crazy? Fox-like! Like a fox!

‘The craziness of the proverbial fox,

‘That was the type of my craziness.’

His name, by the way, was Leo Horwich.

 

2.

Against the prevailing winds, challenging

The conventional wisdom, he foresaw

The growth of orthodontia and financed

The construction of dental office buildings

In suburbs that, like mushrooms, sprang

Up overnight when the expressway

Opened in 1951. The truth was there

To see – for Ben Crane, for Morrie Bayless –

But only he saw the truth. Ben Crane

Smirked at him and Morrie Bayless joked

At his expense. But there came a night

At the Town & Country when he ordered

Finnan haddie and said, ‘They laughed

‘At me but now it is my turn to laugh.

‘Who’s laughing now? I’m laughing

‘All the way to the bank! It’s my turn

‘To laugh, and I’m laughing all the way

‘To the bank! All the way to the bank

‘I am laughing! To the bank! To the bank!’

His name, by the way, was Arnold Felsenfeld.

 

3.

What in life is more agreeable than

To proclaim, ‘They said I was crazy

But I was crazy like a fox’? When does

The old world seem quite so frolicsome

As at the moment a man says,

‘I laughed all the way to the bank’?

It’s sad how, in our era of diminished
Opportunity, children’s furniture stores

Exist in more-than-sufficient numbers,

And enough dental office buildings have

Already been built. Oh, very well! Not crazy

Like a fox nor laughing to the bank, I pin

My hopes on these (what shall I call them?)

Lines! Mock on, heirs of the late Ben Crane

And the late Morrie Bayless. Waiter,

I’ll have the finnan haddie if you please!

And by the way my name is Julius Jaffe.

Or perhaps my name is Lenore M. Kadison.

 

Comments

[Stacey]

This is wonderful Mitch. I love it.

[Laura Orem]

Ditto! And what exactly is finnan haddie? I've heard the name but never looked it up - I suppose I could do so now, but what fun is that?

[mitch s.]

i looked up finnan haddie and learned it is baked halibut. my father occasionally ordered it but i don't recall what it looked like. he also occasionally ordered frogs' legs, totally "treif" and too horrible to think about.

[Laura Orem]

Baked halibut I could do. Frogs' legs and escargot - blech.

[DL]

"Finnan haddie" appears not only in a Cole Porter lyric ("My Heart Belongs to Daddy") but in the fish department at Citarella, where the customer service representative explains that it is a smoked white fish off the coast of Scotland that Europeans eat for breakfast.

[DL]

PS I'm crazy about the poem.

[Aaron Fogel]

publishing houses should be stumbling over each other with seven figure offers for Mitch's poems on this site during the past year. This is the best of its kind since O'Hara and it has got resonances to Villon, Chaucer, and everybody else ever worth reading. Maybe to say so aloud is foolish though and it should be kept quiet to let him keep working.

AF

[Furniture Stores]

How many have headed forward and won against all advice and the prevailing winds. Anyone that has achieved any noteworthy level of success has plowed on against all odds.

[jim cummins]

Lenore Kadison is your mother?

[Laura Orem]

Let us shower Mitch Sisskind with all the finnan haddie he can eat.

[Chicago Observer]

Oy, Mr. Chaucer, it was good you gave a mention to Town and Country. It's good also about the children's furniture stores and nice dental offices like once were on Peterson Avenue (thank you Dr. Bernstein). But now I don't know what it is but I think just about shmattes.