Here On Midsummer’s River, We So Elegantly Fall

At your party I will stand

Compliant as a hat rack

Carefully holding parasols and scarves

(An iron kind of evening — neither cool nor bright)

You will swan about the room

Medusa bleak and breaking arms

Smiling with an executioner’s grace

Bodice laced

With an hourglass desperation

I am still angular as adolescence

By the kitchen door

Holding these strange and lurid canapés

(Pierced through and with an iridescent shine

like the mortised remains

of blue admiral butterflies)

Crying for your midnight emancipation

(Your powdered mien begins to crack like glass)

In the beveled edge of gilded mirrors

Catching signs of extraordinary life

For an exit, feint

Collapsing in three miles of sequinned cloth

As if you were the last enchanted avé

On midsummer’s river

Of course

It is not yet daylight savings here

My hands too full of walking sticks and woollen mittens

I wear my face at 3 a.m. (or quarter past)

And watch

Letting you fall slowly to the floor