not heaven but las vegas

in her long legs and lipstick she sings to the mirror: save me darling!

you’re all i’ve got left, and even this might be a figment. i am so far

from home, in this strange dress of mine. the mirror is too clean,

the bathroom sink upended, the bed an empty unslept nation, peeled

of its citizens and skyscrapers. i’ve pulled on my black tights, i’ve pulled on

my mourning, stifling and ill-fitting. goodbye curtains. goodbye empty rooms.

i tried to bury the world but it came back twice as strong, and hungry for vengeance.

i’ve forgotten the lines now. i’ve mixed up the moves. this lipstick is a smudged affair.

i smudge it on the mirrors. i write my name in not-blood. i paint a memorial to this

wretched self and it comes out messy, all the lines uneven. if i want to be remembered

i’ll have to do it the real way, name a nation after this strange body and then never call

the place home again. all the oceans and evangelical highways forgotten. you know.

moving along. on goes the eyeliner. on goes the show. the hotel mirror scrubbed clean

of yesterday’s loathing. the sadness torn from its socket, the soldier’s limbs broken.

this one-person country ransacked and undone. all the survivors lost and searching

for my face in the wide dirty maw of this mirror, stumbling through the black-hole mouth of this tragic city and its relentless smoker’s grin. mirror, i want to find shelter between your teeth. hold me close, and don’t bite down. i am already so fragile

from all those times i have loved to bursting. and i am a body: i am a sleepless nation:

the mirror echoing back all my faces. the mirror singing a sollemn anthem, singing

you better believe it. you’re real. you’re fucking alive.