Читать книгу How Festive the Ambulance - Kim Fu - Страница 10

The unicorn princess

plays pretend at the bridal shop.

They pull the gowns on carefully

so her horn doesn’t pierce the tulle,

so the cupcake bustle and spreading trains

drape across her back half and all four legs.

She nickers in pleasure at her reflection,

tells the long story of how she met

her imaginary fiancé, describes the venue

in quotes from a magazine:

weathered wood demands muslin drapes,

centrepieces alternate roses and curly willow.

She goes to open houses to riffle through drawers,

to pocket tchotchkes and sniff the sheets.

She divines meaning from the way the chairs face

toward or away from the southern light.

She knows these people, as she knows the ones

on the Home & Garden channel:

sledgehammering through walls and revealing

their sodden, infested, but fixable souls.

She dyes her mane with Kool-Aid, and the pink runs.

She applies gold spray paint to her horn each morning,

hoping to imitate the brass tusks

on the unicorns skewered to the carousel,

their brittle, painted smiles, harnesses

embedded in their backs and shellacked to high gloss.

Her horn still has the unsettling texture of a tooth,

the suggestion of a living core, a warm and pulsing root.