Chris Gylee

Animal is going to disappear, completely

Standing out on the street
Down the backstairs
Of three-three-three
Smoking a nervous cigarette Squinting into the evening August sun Beard scratchy and hot with tobacco Chest tightening

Warmed flannel
Battered leather
Sweat building up in his pits
It’s the last show of four
And the second-to-last day of summer
Tomorrow he will clear everything out of the shoebox dressing room Sweep up
Glitter, hair
Hand-cut strips of orange cellophane
Pack props, instruments
Wigs
Into two big bags
Sling these over his shoulders
Give Jill the keys
Get his deposit dollars back
Stuff them in his jeans

If he were a different person he’d burn this place down In a blaze of glory
He sees that
Has a sharp imagination

Swilling gasoline out on the wooden staircase
Clattering down in heels
Tossing a lit match over a perfumed, expanded shoulder Strutting out onto Valencia
Hailing a cab
Extended glossy nails
If they’re not going to come and fill the place for him Laugh
Weep
Applaud with hands smacking hard, painfully
Such is their enthusiasm
Clapping at their collective revelation
Gasp
To get outside immediately
Worked up
Animated
Ready to change the world
Right now
C’mon c’mon

A brilliant, dangerous urgency
If they’re not going to show up
Buy a goddam ticket
Spend their money on beer and pizza in the Castro instead Then nobody should perform here

No tired beat poetry
No simpering cabaret tunes
No dry discussions
Flaky old queers sitting around a microphone on tired chairs Circling the same unsolvable moans
No
They can flatten the burnt-up palace
Scrape away the blackened wreckage
Build something, anything
Grey and sleek and pointless
Computer-generated glass by an assistant architect
An intern
From a second-rate firm
Offices to let
To sit empty
Waiting for a start-up
And the right price

But he’s no arsonist
When he’s off stage
He’s not one who burns things up
He’s a vanisher
He’ll spend the deposit on a Greyhound ticket Slip out of town and into the autumn
Head somewhere quieter
Getting sicker, eventually
Tired
An animal that can find a hole
A place to retreat to
Burrow away in a blanket
Fever and hallucinations
Dreaming of grasshoppers
Breeze
Notes on a flute climbing up scales
Higher, higher

There’s a glory in this too, Animal In the existing
In the attempt
In the doing

Last drag
Animal closes his eyes
Feels the heat on the lids
That pink-red
Prepares to ascend to the stage