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Rapt by Her Angularity

I am held without reservation
and shown to a table near the kitchen,
a schoolboy sans homework
each breath interminable
as if, in slow-motion, I am forced
to restock shelves against a deadline.
I do my best, however, to weather
the strange ineptitude,
the discoloration of the senses that follows,
but before I know it,
a certain triviality arrives
with its own list of demands.
Later, after the downsize,
several strangely-costumed female leads
appear on cue from installations
and reappear one by one
as if in an infinite loop
offering monologues and soliloquies,
odds and check-out times,
well-wrought and well-received,
thorough in their encryption
yet lacking in their payback,
while outside a rickety milk wagon
continues along our narrow one-way street
depositing its ancient bottles
on one chipped stoop after another.

Black-Haired Girl  by Egon Schiele