How Far Would You Go for a Gag

Our long-awaited

jaunt to gay Paree 

has been postponed.

I try to be upbeat

as I spring the news:

In a year

it will still be there.

It’s not going anywhere.

Aside from the predictable

poet and I didn’t even know it

remark, you bring up the

chance that it won’t,

blown right off the map

in a Putin tantrum,

or as the bullseye for a

space rock—or suffer yet

another bubonic plague.

I take it even further

than your gloom—

that Parisians will roll

their streets up like a scroll,

take apart their homes,

disassemble the

Eiffel Tower

like Meccano,

once they hear that

we are coming;

that we’ve waited

20 years for their baguettes;

corking their champagne,

stuffing every suitcase

with berets, leaving

every Fifi

with their friends in

Monaco—which

should be 

a part of France

I’ve heard them say;

that its monarch is no

Louis—Fourteenth or

otherwise—

and the only good

thing about it

was Princess Grace,

who, upon visiting

the Champs-Élysées,

was struck that every inch

was crammed with lovers,

no space without a kiss,

no scene

that wasn’t painted—

and that Khrushchev

was a monster

on the news, vowing

when she was there

to launch it

into orbit,

once he tried the cognac

from Marseille, which,

I’ve been told,

is just as good as Paris

in November, the airfare

half the price.

Andreas Gripp

June 7, 2025

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