“The Purple Pit Cigarette Girl” by Charles Rammelkamp

I snicker now, the announcement of the Nobel Prize Chemistry Award winners having jogged my memory, as I hobble behind my aluminum walker….

Terry Higgins, God, what a girl –
uncredited cigarette girl, specifically,
in the original 1963 Jerry Lewis version 
of The Nutty Professor, Stella Stevens
the voluptuous love interest to Lewis’ nerdy
near-sighted Chemistry professor, Julius Kelp.
But Terry Higgins snagged my attention,
fifteen-year-old me in the Bijou darkness,
sucking my Good & Plenty licorice candies –
bursting Joy’s grape against my palate fine,
as Keats put it in “Ode to Melancholy.”

Back home, I rooted around my older brother’s room
for his 1960 Cocktail Calendar – nude girls,
recipes for drinks – and sure enough,
a photo of Terry, the Tennessee beauty,
in all her 40-23-37 glory.

Terry graced the covers and centerfolds
of so many men’s magazines back in the day,
magazines my buddies and I sneaked looks at
in Abe Sherman’s newsstand racks after school –
Cavalcade, Cloud-9, Rapture, Snap, Taboo –
the list goes on and on.

I snicker now, the announcement of the Nobel Prize
Chemistry Award winners having jogged my memory,
as I hobble behind my aluminum walker
out to the sidewalk where my grandson waits
to help me into his car
for my doctor’s appointment.

“Ready, Pop-Pop?” Jimmy asks, a note of impatience,
but he’s a good kid,
his whole life stretching ahead of him.

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two of his full-length collections have been published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, is forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing.