Under study

(Balcony scene from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet)

Music moves like a ghost
through my mouth,
sweeping the nave,
ruffling a breeze from
the nightingale wings
ribbed beneath their cage

And velvet folds
of encores’ gold
dust my powdered cheek,
as slippered toes
trace all shades of sin
from pas de deux
confessionals

With quickening haste,
the urgency scrapes
from stage boards
bowed with sweat and lace,
up two knees,
weak with plié,
to land en pointe
between my legs

And I’m thrown,
up high,
on the fork of a tongue,
with a wrest of faith,
eyes star-crossed
by grands jetés
tossing their blue,
and red,
and indigo
stays

Ay me!

She speaks.
To de Bergerac shadows
beneath a Russian skirt,
and yet I know whose fingers
suck at this bodice,
unlacing restraint,
smoking my blood
with their iambic
adagio,
I know the hands,
born of a Bard,
Montague-slain,
O Romeo, Romeo

Anon, good nurse!
His love is deep,
Anon . . .

And pressed into
an arabesque penchée,
I lean for my love
with all that I am,
spread for a satisfaction
Will couldn’t pen,
wanting so far that toes
slip their grip,
tipping me tulle
over heels,
and on over a
balcony

So the nightingale
flies,
she drops  
but soft
through an air,
the cobwebs of notes
pretty pirouettes
of tethers unheeled,
past the inconstant moon,
with its cold, wary eye
under a hail
of applause
on this bone-
splintered night

Ay, me

So here I thud,
without any lark
or midwinter night's dream,
in a crumpled split
of pages pressed
upon cheek,
the line of drool
escaping my lips
too weak a poison to
kill the sweet sorrow
that I am not Juliet,
but Rosaline

Of the prosaic fate
to march my steps
up against Mrs. Hayes
and her multiple choice
English exam
to be taken first thing,
on the ground story
of E. Cleveland High,
west wing

You know the room,
second door on the left,
it has a grille over
the window
in lieu of
drapes