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 & so swallow down
their fear. The villain shows himself
too soon & is all wrong for this play –
not a dashing captain but a pirate
with a stickshift for an arm & a stopwatch
where his heart should be. 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 thread of girl to theme? Who will,
when the curtain closes, unhook the beauties
from their wings & 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.
Nancy Reddy’s work has appeared in Smartish Pace, Memorious, Best New Poets 2011, Best of the Net 2011, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is currently a doctoral candidate in composition and rhetoric.
