Mannequin Envy
a journal of visual and literary arts
Directions Follow signs to the cemetery where daffodils endure spring in bright coats of rain. Turn left at the driveway marked by a tombstone. A woman waits for you at the house. Her dog is dying. Through her screen, you can smell fresh-turned earth. Join her at the back door, staring at yellow spots that break the gray. Intermission The old man beside us is shushing his wife. A man and a woman in the front row fall asleep. The symphony dies to a cough. Light returns, with polite applause. The man and the woman jerk to life. The bathroom is mobbed. Martinis are a warmth in the gut. The memory of music is like that also, reaching around the lobby in a dream. The habit of silence falls away, releasing a din, and in its themes and variations sound human horns across the reedy distance of the mezzanine. Lights flash. The old man will shush his wife again. The woman and the man will remember the noise of horns in their dreams. Drums and gongs resume. Applause. Drums. |