“The
story is the ballet.
Otherwise, it would all
just be a bunch of steps.”
Otherwise, it would all
just be a bunch of steps.”
--Karen Gabay, ballerina
Marcello’s Lament
Starving baritone finds the
stone on a
black sand beach covered in
driftwood
(If I said the wood was white
as bones
I would be giving it away.)
He kneels on the sand where
the
ocean comes through the rocks
and reaches into the ribs of
a burnt-out cello
plowing a pyramid of
blackened
chars until he fingers the
edges of its
mineral heart and
pulls it into the sun.
(If I said it was as red as
Betelgeuse
I would be lying.)
The stone is a jealous stone
it takes away his lovers
takes away his sleep
leaves his pockets thin and
sallow
She is Musetta
the woman you cannot have
but if you hold her to your
ear she will
sing you bright waltzes and
turn her lollipop eyes at you
across the café.
But the song and the glance
are not enough,
so Marcello takes the stone
and grinds it up,
spreads it across his Sunday
salad
(If I said the dressing was
Roquefort I would be saying
too much.)
The fragments trunkle their
way through his
veins and gather at the
aorta,
pressing northward to make
his heart skip
on nights when Artemis falls awry
and
mountainside lanterns burst
like
meteors through the Paris
streets.
Years after Mimi’s last
breath
he comes back to the sea to
bare his
skin to the inkwell sky and
wait for Orion’s belt to burn
him down,
leaving a coal as red as
Betelgeuse
for the timpani waves to
steam away.
First published in Eclectic
Literary Forum
Photo by MJV
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