The following recording is from The New York Society Library, Live from the Library, October 19, 2016. The audio recording is also available here.
[embed]https://soundcloud.com/tracyquan13_2/tracyquan-reads-melania2016-on-blarb[/embed]
Jennifer says you're busy tonight,
You're on an endless dinner date.
Sometimes I think
WE ARE ALL MELANIA
If you're pretty, enjoy nice things,
and you care what people think
Can't face life in a monastery cell,
with creative wrinkles
and highbrow principles
If you know how to please,
have a nice figure
And you get stuck with a date like that?
Let me quote Dr Seuss at you
"Bang-ups can happen to you."
Have you ever noticed that Melania's man
Looks a bit like Ned in bed?
Everything going badly wrong
After a dystopic nap.
Jennifer says you're still on your dinner date,
but where do you dine, Melania? It's Thursday.
My wish for you is a charming offspring
of the French pavilion at the 1939 fair.
Or a stepchild from the second tier,
run by some octogenarian philosopher king.
Still kicking it old school, serving
creamed veggies and floating island.
You could order the Crêpes Suzette.
Pretend it's not yet 1970.
Wrap this up, get back in the limo
Where we all belong
Where good things begin, bad things
End.
Pretend you've never seen an SUV.
Pretend with me
that all the TV
is funneled into 3
Power Hungry Networks
and your sleepless husband
has never heard the word
Reality.
For Jennifer Blowdryer
LARB Contributor
Tracy Quan's third novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in the Nation as a “deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash.” Quan’s debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Financial Times, the New York Times, Truthdig, Reason and the Daily Beast.
Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?
LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!