A skintight redhead thrums her fingers on the headboard
insinuating a melody laced with mellifluous fragrances
not unlike those encountered in perfumeries.
Nearby the Pleiades paint themselves into bird-like costumes
and begin Tantric-like flapping
to the beat of the skintight girl's thrumming fingers.
Quiet laughter seeps through the sidewalk.
A neon sign looks on.
Several eyes meet in elasticized anticipation.
A contortionist pleads ignorance before asking a prophet
for a lift. The prophet, in the blue haze of her ilk,
recites lines from Il Purgatorio, as snow fills the frame,
leaving little to the screenwriter's scrutiny.
The screenwriter, once identified, closes her clipboard
and leaves in a late-model huff, crossing the street
to the corner pub where torch singers, contraband,
and overdue library books grace the menu.
It is a literary pub of sorts, Joycean in its accoutrements.
The owner's pet tern tends bar.
The skintight girl gives head and directions to a shadowy extra
assumed by the patrons to be a ne'er-do-well.
He is in fact the Magistrate's confessor.
He wears a long string of sorrows and strikes
a penitential pose, pint held high.
The words Last fall.... slip from his pursed lips
moments before a tom scurries off with the skintight girl
without anyone realizing what is happening.
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| Lily Cole |