Читать книгу Double Jinx - Nancy Reddy - Страница 8

Ex Machina

The chorus girls descend, their wings a wonder

of feather and zipline. The oboes

in the orchestra pit yawn

as if to gulp them whole, but the girls

are singing and so swallow down

their fear. The villain shows himself

too soon and is all wrong for this play—

not a dashing captain but a pirate

with a stick shift for an arm and a stopwatch

in his heart. Where the audience

should be—the rows of lovely velvet seats

and numbered placards, donated

by the dead or named for them—there’s

only sea. The violinists do a kick turn

and set out into the waves. What happened

to the playwright, to the plot? Who will stitch

the chorus to the theme? Who will,

when the curtain drops, unhook the beauties

from their wings and turn them back

to girls, wrap terrycloth robes around

their sequined bodysuits? We cannot wait

for angels. We’ll be our own gods now.

Watch us swinging from the rafters

like a lifeboat or a bird of prey.