We are clinging to a spinning pole.
Drink in your fist,
phone in your mouth—my mouth is empty,
agape like a fish.
Tongue dragging across the floor
out of my control, snaking along the lines
of a script I’ve read before.
Someone picks it up and tugs—then shoves it in his hole.
Like so many lemmings,
a well-rehearsed routine;
he’s following me.
Eventually, kick him off gently,
(might as well be stepping off The Stage)
time to stop spinning.
Find you on the floor:
drink gone from your fist, phone long lost—
contents of your stomach too.
No, lemmings isn’t quite right.
We are ants in a Death Spiral:
spinning in circles,
trailing the stench of the sweats and spirits and smokes and strobes.
Drag you past a drag queen
stalking across The Stage,
concluding her routine.
Press some ones into the free
hand of the security guard
pushing your wheelchair.
This might be our best performance of gender yet.
