The crepe de chine of my floor-length
gown dusts the corridor through which
I pass, en route to the governor’s ball,
glass of Crémant d’Alsace in my
fusilladed hand. Were this an
opera, the flautist would be
poised, instrument aloft,
in the orchestral pit:
as it stands, it’s a book,
pages burning, and I
its author slash muse,
inaugurating speech
from my head-set,
master console
at headquarters
crackling, crackling,
before lighting this
Victorian melodrama
(smoke and mirrors
of De Profundis)
on fire.
Virginia Konchan‘s poems have appeared in Best New Poets, the Believer, The New Yorker, and The New Republic, and her criticism in Boston Review, Quarterly Conversation, Barzakh Magazine, and elsewhere. Co-founder of Matter, a literary journal of political poetry and commentary, she lives in Chicago.