Sore-beshitted she was when the old Met was torn down,
standing ghost-like by the rubble
in her Madame Butterfly kimono
as if anticipating her 2014 demise,
like an obituary writer in need of an embellishment.
Waif-like and as if upon her gaunt visage she’d collected
all the cobwebs from the old props closet,
her mouth all a-pout like a brioche gone poof.
You could tell she was suffering
a nostalgia as big as a hernia.
The Times . . . The Times of New York said that she did
mortality exceptionally well,
especially her expiration as a Butterfly (Cio-Cio San)
and as a swan in love (Odette.)
To see how Mimi and Violetta
should do it,
she haunted a tuberculosis ward.
But her own world
being other than a stage,
she went out at 105 like the old-Met custodian
putting the key to the lock for the final
unnecessary click.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 22, Issue 2.
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