Poem

“The Box”

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So I remember the hidden: every night my zaydee at the ballet watching Zizi kicking her petite leg above the outstretched claws of the chorus line as they moved in perfect ruby unison through third position and then spun their tulle skirts into a twirl. All that I know of the interior paramour I learned from patient zaydee sitting shirtless off-stage in his old pajamas, waiting for his crop-haired Zizi to flick her gypsy fan onto his lap in a mighty crescendo of leaps and bounds and how could I not love this and him and all his knowledge of the carnal life inside the box and so it is for his sake alone I placate the lovers shaking their fists in the park, pitched in battle over all the new thinking outside the box they call their lives and the faces they make as I pull from my coat the Lobster Ballet I can never remember because always I am too busy abandoning their hearts and engaging the subtle mechanisms of dance and pointing and blabbering in my delicious nervousness so that I even forget to tell them they should hum something Iberian or Basque and that even “April in Paris” will do as I gently shake the scarlet dancers of Carmen to stockinged attention and then the watching, the blessed watching of lovers rediscovering the pageantry of the interior.