Issue 3
2010
$11.95

Slow Fail

A monocle, some opera gloves:
                                                                the down-turn starts
with these things hidden in a dark spot. Like a dried-flower corsage.
Or a Swiss dancer’s costume. Kept safe from a watchful eye,


or high noon, the nosy landlord. And then the careful cleaning
of the fingertips, a play against the desire to jump
from spot to spot, a quiet formality over the smallest space


there has ever been to wash.
                                                          Somewhere there’s the thought
that maybe I am falling out of fashion, a whining
and frailing Cleopatra, a stretch of kohl across the wrong skin,


and not even the lightest thought that this is wrong.
This is not lightening,
                                           this is not the razor-fast.
Instead, a slow-dreaming machine pushing me


through my mad scene, bringing my soprano-pitch
past its breathless height. Eventually a puckered mouth,
a dry tongue,
                           a salty taste for even the sweetest moment.