hairspray and tears
crumpled tissues
kissed with blood
a dark carriage
halts at the stage door
curtains impenetrable
every man
in the audience wants her
but none will wait
without gloves
their hands ache to close
on glass stems canes cigars
her breath heats
the jewels of sweat
on their foreheads
the orchestra saws and thumps
erecting and dismantling
mansions and hovels of sound
the pause between
the last note and applause
encases her final gesture
behind glass as thin as a scream
folded wings a brown
that's only blue when he flies
and leaves a trembling where he's been
that he and I work for the same master
is in the set of his shoulders
the sure-fire direction of his bill
the mountain beyond him
and the cold sky are still
soon the blond inanga will cloud the creeks
one character seems to want to know
more about my church going (a clean slate)
than the skills he'd be paying me for
at home my eight month old grandson and I
watch my three year old granddaughter dance
in a television show of her own imagining
as I tell the Sally selling sausages
outside the Warehouse
any friend of Jesus is a friend of mine
the men want
to forget it all
in wine drunks
on rafts
in the middle
of the river
the women
rub their throats
with handfuls
of earth
a balm and
a corrective
instructing them