i.m. Juliette Drouet

Of all of them I would have preferred you:

like those backing girls in Motown

I adored in youth, or Mary Magdalene

(forgive me, please…) and still do:

heroic girls with walk-on do-wop roles,

victorious victims of the powers that be:

dream-women who make it through

to papier maché dignity, as flesh fails.

I want to spend the night with you,

soirée à deux; you in all your finery,

shabby-genteel, glitter of old jewellery,

remembrance found in your lost gaze,

and you will tell it like it was

to strut your stuff, and play the muse.