On Broadway
Shot after shot
backstage, I taste nothing
save the bitterness of cardboard.
We drink chlorophyll
out of champagne flutes,
claustrophobic among plastic trees,
painting their organelles with vomit
meticulous as honeycomb.
We fell off the stage
built of tenuous strands of sugar,
pilings of marmalade.
Foundations fondant and whipped air
could never support a tipsy chorus.
So strange to see from a perspective
close to the ground,
instead of high above it
map-like.
Nothing happens faster
than the mistakes we make unknowingly,
jumping from set to set
to avoid our scripted scenes.
