I. Tales of the Jazz Age

Tonight the ambassador will have us for drinks.
Tomorrow, that lady we’ve never met,
will say, “Oh you wouldn’t believe what dear Zelda said–
The funniest joke about an auto mechanic and the Prince of Wales…”
My collarbones pose like the jaw of a bluefish and that sweet way
I touch your arm when you laugh–
even the most sensible man, the one there in the gray suit,
will say, “You wouldn’t believe me
but they absolutely glowed.”

II. This Side of Paradise

You wouldn’t dare to leave but you did, you do.
The clock will stay up with me, as my ballet slippers reconcile
the melting ice cubes on the wooden floor.
You command the imaginary but
my beauty races storms.
Watch this gold-hatted lover dance!
I use your drafts to put out my cigarette,
searing the word splendor.
My dripping tumbler blurs the word money.

III. The Beautiful and Damned

The buzzing lily-cups—yellow and black
in my hair, now in my eyes.
The twitch of poisoning, a voice inside that I don’t recognize.
The hair ribbons hung from the vanity are shocked to silence —
my dear it’s just me, it’s just me!
A shriek drowns him,
then there are claws, then dark.

IV. Tender is the Night

I heard the nurses in their tissued suits and peppery shoes
turning the corners of this ward.
Like greedy hands to my breasts and deep breathing in my ear,
the waxy dripping of the wires, the hissing steam.
I can make a warm bed from these embers.
I try to hold a thought of you, but after eight years
the exact color of your eye alludes me.