After a photo by Shepard Sherbell, cover art for Little Girl Blue:
The Life of Karen Carpenter by Randy L. Schmidt
Famous for your toothy grin, for once you do not
smile for the camera, instead stand stone-faced
beside Richard, look cold. I see your thin, taut lips
but my eyes are drawn to yours, where I find
more pain
than I ever found in your songs.
Staring at your image, I listen to your mellow alto.
“Little Girl Blue”—performed by Satchmo, Sinatra,
Joplin, Garland, then you—sounds filtered through
a sieve of sadness
you hid from the public. Is it you,
or the character you give voice to, who croons of sitting,
counting your fingers? In that gesture of desperation
foreshadowing tragedy, the two of you seem to merge,
mask melded to face.
I wonder, was I tricked all those years
into believing the heartbreak, the sorrow you sang of,
wasn’t your own, but rather the baggage of writers—
fictional burdens lifted on the wings of your voice?
Dressed too warmly for L.A.—it’s winter in Paris—
you wear a thick-ribbed turtleneck, stylish wool coat
with buttons everywhere—pockets, plackets, cuffs.
You lace your fingers in a tight grip.
Were you counting them, too?
First appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly
Richard Allen Taylor, Poet 