was quite the whole night’s biggest hit,
my champagne punch-up champion.
I switched the lyrics for the sake of hit,
I sang the dirty verses.

With an aim to state a space wherein
all you smallish audiencemen
might feel you got that thing (yet bigger).
Yes dear, I looked you in the eye.

Why not? You are all after all naught
but people in a painting. I blaze
above your tableau, your North Stage-Door. So
anything goes, and anything that goes
on forever goes on
for only a night.

It just goes to show
that silly lascivities, cinnamons of these, dancing
girls will forgive anything, especially
under such forsparkling flutes
of yellow and leaven and light, such as
what had us so had this night. This night

I felt tall and proud to be tall,
or not quite proud but towering
over-exaggerate (adjectivesque) of
the steep declivity twisting between (because comedy
needs a contrast like I’d like a contract, and need
to ever over-identify
with the city sky, ragged horizon,
bowl without a punchline) me
and the rinas petiting round me.

Sweet sweet! Not one the “natural” type.
And the gnashed mélange
of my mouth matched well
those twirlish pink tutus:
big sticky red grin and pearls
too big for little
girls to purchase.
I sang the dirty verses.
Oh, and then he walked in.

In he walked, in me
a heady whelming felt,
pleasure and dread and stomach and ugh —
wedding helming melt.

On my honor, I’ll walk home alone.
And if I’m feeling romantic, I’ll rain.

is a poet from upstate New York who now writes in Idaho, where she studies and teaches poetry at Boise State University. Her chapbook Ekho and Narkissos was published by the pamphlet series The Swan and its recording can be heard on PennSound. Other work of hers can be read in Mercury Firs, Caesura, Annulet, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in the Chicago Review and Antiphony.