I came across another instance recently of Cher in a poem. This one is by Anita Endrezze.

La Morena and Her Beehive Hairdo

1965-1970

The Dark One sported a beehive hairdo
where she once hid her brother Alfonso.
His girlfriend had a husband who carried a switchblade
pretty as a butterfly in his back pocket.
Alfonso camped out in La Morena’s dusky hair
until the coast was clear, at least as far a San Pedro.
Then he vamoosed to Tucson
where he married a young hairdresser
from the Yaqui barrio.

Without any family responsibilities, La Morena felt light-headed.
She changed her name again. Old Lady. It was the sixties, man,
and she was everyone’s old lady. She really dug those long-haired vets
from Nam. She wore granny boots and long paisley dresses
and carried a small baggie of white horse
in her leather fringed purse. Everyone called her
Indian Princess and said Cher looked just like her.
She slept around, snorting coke up a straw
until she saw red stars galloping around her heart
and herds of tiny white horses dying in nights of Black Velvet.

I won’t ask her if she remembers. It was real
but it wasn’t true. She was living in someone else’s mandala
because it was on the top-ten chart. Somewhere
along the way she lost herself. It’s the Yaqui Way
of Knowledge by Carlos Coyote-Peyote.
When we found Jesus, we held out our palms
for coins, Bibles, good-looking Indian Boys.
She was my sister. Kneel down, little sister, she said.
And we did, down in front of altars of bees
and tubes of pale lipstick, crosses made of lovers’ bodies,
broken shoes, floods of moons, Janis Joplin, rowdy measures
of life. Those summers, slab dancing and picking up guys,
were the best times, she says, the best. When she was young
and I was just beginning my own story, my own howling
at the American moon.

2000