Rotoscope
by Chris Van Buren

pulling up a fade with the title, Talkartoons—

Cab Calloway slips his monochromatic
high lazy 1932 steps all over the grey trumpet

of the Prohibition Blues sweeping
his arms in an airplaned jazz shouldered
like an elephant swept up in a change of mind—held over—

suddenly fell to the faded velvet beat
the slobbering brass his tie keeping
everyone in place

and WHILE the lint of static coughed—

Leroy Maxey tossed his drumsticks

like a prayer, in black and white.

(Cab didn’t see it until the cartoon was stitched into him)(here)

Betty Boop and her garter won’t eat—pout—
while suspenders and a moustache

extemporize the Old World
(the Ellis Island mother leaning on the other side)

so much his head BECOMES an Edison phonograph

the tired lathe engraved cylinder song
the horn with its jabbering lips, spitting

“—o Papa,…[falling out of the room,

a sob to make sense of things;
the face’s wetness does not think

though her lips imprinted on a damp handkerchief
sing a few bars of Mean to Me—
and she tromps up the stairs to run
away or pack her toothbrush and HESITATE,

—the orchestra distracts itself,

* [the note reads:
            Dear Ma and Pa—
             I’m leaving Home because
      you’re not so Sweet to me. I
      won’t ever be Home again.
                        Betty

calls Bimbo on the rotary phone
“meet me under your window—

And running away is being drawn differently

—

her heels touch the ground, jazz sieves in again—now—
she’s taller, her dress failing high above the knee,
intuits that maybe she’ll be censored soon [1935, The Hayes Act
to be a secretary and a teacher, [ [ [like coming Home

and trembles a little, striding, YOUNG

to “Minnie the Moocher,”

—

down a slow introductory road like a muted trumpet and here night and

into a nervous [Cave],

(“I’m not afraid, are you, peering, where Cab Calloway

a black man lives.

—

not quite this either but the ghostly walrus,
steals Cab’s voice, the body rotoscoped:

animated over the footage, on top of the body—
condenses into your VISION tusks out “Folks
now here’s a story ‘bout
Min nie the Mooch er—

knees trickle like a piano and pull back on the heels
then “she was the—a capital moan—Roughest,

Tough est FRAIL—Minnie…hadaheart

As Big as a Whale…”

and Skeletons will drink to this, turn black
and fall apart as fossils, the refrain

* (and echoed Cab)—Hi-de-hi-de-ho

…the walrus slides without walking to the right

cannot edit his own frames
pulled in the [hearingmagnet]

(Betty forced to watch “She messed around
with a bloke named Smoky

(and displacing dark sound with his paws the [Cave]
taut eyes, “He took her down

to Chine atown—

* (and taught her how to kick the gong around”

opium dream: Betty saw

the three Ghosts in their jail cells with striped hats march
to the Chair for this, when the Warden (Cab) throws—

the first call and response, listen
[strapped to the chairs]
he reaches his wail and throws
!the Switch

the ghosts holler into death—look up weakly, as he

continues: She had a DREAM about the king of Sweden
He gave her things that she was NEEDING

Betty, still shivering at the darkness now turns negative, a photograph

and folding herself out into my corners

and there My skull protrudes behind

the walrus in the background almost rotoscoped
…I slide without walking, to the right pulled
by the pulsing, inevitable scat—held over—

and here we hushed a circle around him,
our FACES drawn inward

when a witch tore from the screen,
would enter us, her mouth just

swallowing the dark room breaking a thin film a sudden
depth hissing out of

jazz stuck in our thoughts,
like lightning sticks to clouds
jazz struck in our thoughts,
like lighting struck the clouds

so Betty Boop and Bimbo cried and fled the [Cave]
to the Vine St. Drag and the moon turned

in a ragtime step for the older folks,
and Betty in rhythm pounced the road behind

played everything BACKWARDS though didn’t regret

and up the stairs (when

the trumpet feels
a moral coming on)(unravels)

the underblanket, the note above, the ripped:

[Dear Ma and Pa—]
                I’m leaving] Home [because
            you're not so] Sweet [to me. I
        won’t ever be] Home [again.

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