Madame Deluxe
Excerpt

Madame Deluxe

When you are guillotined

your head goes on thinking for two minutes.

If I were guillotined, my head

would remember this:

a drag queen dressed like a barnyard hen,

her tiara slightly to the side.

Red lips moving over something

thick and pre-sung in the smoke.

The room holds all of this in a waterglass,

in the sheen off caviar,

glitter, and jockstraps,

waxed legs and nose trimmers,

deep cups full of foam,

but also this: a white bird rising with my wrists in its beak.

When my head is cut off from your body,

I think of you dancing around the fallen axe.

Your wings beating, your eyelashes

batting but you can’t

lift up in those heels.

It’s the body that stops feeling,

forgets, but the eyes still see

your red stockings. The nose knows the sweat.

The ears hear the needle scratch your jazz.

My teeth will remember

your teeth like little drawers of silver

fish. My brain will taste

a row of shining sardines in brine.

At night, my lips will come to kiss

your dazzling neck.