Beauty’s in the next room
and everyone’s enchanted.
She’s sitting on a piano, singing
an Irish drinking song, sober
as a Monday morning.
Her silk cocktail dress is singing
too, a few inches short of breath,
while philosophers at her feet
keep filling her glass, mesmerized
by the fingers of light on her stockings.
Gentlemen, let me be clear;
She bores me to tears with her curls
and her lilts, with her hips and
her teasing. She puts me to sleep
with her spiraling promises;
like the one she’s making now,
encrypted in notes you can’t possibly
hear as if she were a gate swung
open wide, and me, the lone stallion
set free to roam the world.
(first published in Boulevard)