notes on a woman arranging her hair

Here, the light owns you, holds you
among the black coats and dresses.

The women swooning on absinthe
and blue light. Soon, he'll come

with his paints and brushes.
His wandering hands, greasy with appetite.

The girls good for nothing but dancing,
nothing but the blood red foam of their skirts.

The high kick, the hullabaloo.
Their sickness a chanteuse

slipping among cigarette cases.
Languor in all the floorboards,

the bottom of each glass.
Every mirror gone dark with lovely.

Comments

I love the sickly/swoony green faces in Toulouse-Lautrec paintings (at least I think that's who that painting is by)--and 'absinthe' strikes me as a very apt word to use in a poem inspired by such a painting. I also like the high kick hullaballoo line.