With a Marionette on a Tether

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https://youtu.be/J04-DhcYqEA

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“Well, I never,” she said,

as she walked straight ahead

off the stage at the end of the act

with a marionette on a tether.

The play was a bomb, and she

.

couldn’t be certain how long

the dull thing would go on,

but she’d wanted what seemed

like forever to have the occasion

to say in a play, “Well, I never.”

.

She’d longed for this line

like a coke addict pines for more

lines of cocaine or a masochist

pleads for more pain.

If she were a desert, this line

.

would be rain. And now in this

terrible play it had fallen to her

every night to be summoned

to say it. And now, every night,

at the end of an act,

.

with a marionette on a tether,

she once again felt his first

breath wafting down like

a feather: the heat in his

mouth – the fur on his chest –

.

the unrest had unraveled her:

worse, it had promised

to banish the curse, fill the lack,

as he breathed on her back,

“Well, I never.”

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