Nine Jackies

[Caliode]

Looking forward to Fifty years ago,
While the chicken bones pile up,
And a young woman screws up her pretty face
Blinking in the winter sunshine.

The cavalcade moves on.

[qimissung]

Very nice, if it's about what I think it's about.

[hillwalker]

Mhmm.

'cavalcade' or 'motorcade'?

Intriguingly cryptic.

H

[qimissung]

Good question. A cavalcade can be made up of cars.

[hillwalker]

Agreed - but in the context (if I read it right) it was always referred to as a motorcade.

H

[Caliode]

Nine Jackies is the title of a well known painting by Andy Warhol, which shows Jackie squinting in the November sunlight on her arrival at Dallas.

You can have a cavalcade of history or a circus cavalcade or indeed a procession of motor cars. All of which are somehow applicable.

Next year will be the fiftieth anniversary of the shooting.

I remember from somewhere that Oswald ate chicken for his lunch before he pulled the trigger.

In the UK last night we saw a film of the Wisconsin primary of 1960 with Hubert Humphrey (HHH )and Kennedy. Jackie was there looking so breathtakingly beautiful amidst the farm hands and the working people of Milwaukee. Kennedy made a great speech about America standing like a sentinel at the camp fire. HHH was like a salesman cracking jokes and being folksy. RFK bobbed up toward the end looking like a sinister juvenile, which I suppose he was.

Frighteningly evocative and somehow very real after over fifty years.

[qimissung]

I love how you appropriated the title of that piece of art for your poem. It's very evocative somehow. I remember watching a long doc which exhaustively went through all the points of whether or not there were multiple shooters. Fascinating stuff. I'm now convinced there was just the one.

I saw Ruby shoot Oswald on TV. I was nine and playing on the floor with my sister. I remember my mother springing forward and shouting out in shock. My sister and I paused then kept playing. But I still remember the moment.