“Picture this: Your lips on my lips.”
I saw before me two gleaming specters, two circus angels in white lace and red lips, the legendary gypsy sisters known affectionately by their mother and by us as Coco and Rosie.
Anchoring me, keeping me from evaporating with the music was the thin arm of a dark-haired, sweet-faced girl I met but two days before, when she laid her cold palm on my face and told me she was looking for a princess. Two lights dangling from her belt showed our feet stepping lightly towards each other, tentative, but animated.
Rosie’s wail hearkened an apocalypse, broadcasting bizarre prophecies from beneath her waterfall of wavy hair. She danced like a wild child, an acrobat, exposing her palms to us like a priest giving a blessing.
Coco played with childrens toys, waving around an orange keyboard with rainbow keys that emitted fuzzy tones like those of an old radio. She tossed the sounds of windchimes over the throbbing mass before her like a spell. I felt the stems of my girl’s fingers wandering over my arrowhead hips as the tinny sounds of a tiny xylophone popping merrily in our ears.
“I’ll wait for you until the streets become sand.”
My girl and I played handgames in sync with the porcelain figures above us, the hem of Coco’s dress swirling around her ankles, my palms sometimes missing my girl’s and coming into abrupt and welcome contact with the soft gingham of her forearms.
Behind the twirling girls onstage and their zoo of instruments, a screen showed us images so ghastly and gorgeous that we were overwhelmed with the task of just seeing them. A carnival swingset circled in technicolor over living trees; my girl shined her light on my hands so I could roll a cigarette for us. We smoked it fingertips to mouth to mouth, under the blinking human eye of a white horse I was sure was an owl at first.
“And all the while, I clung heavy to your back, my desire harnessed deeply in your spine.”
Exhaustingly strange, unbearable beautiful. The gypsy sisters’ red mouths, swinging wide over their pale faces, came to meet at the same microphone to blend melodies just as our mouths met against each other’s to do the same.
I don’t know how it ended. I don’t know how our terrible angels left us there as we begged for more. I don’t know how I came out of that place that had seemed inescapably eternal. I don’t know how many kisses flew between my lips and my girl’s as we realized our inevitable parting; I don’t know how I came from holding her against me, buried in the heat of hundreds of people, to feeling nothing but the cool outside air on my skin. It was like I’d fallen asleep and woken up back on the streets, trying desperately to retain each small fragment of the breathtaking dream I’d just had.
Somewhere inside me, though, that night is not over. I am still under those blinking blue lights. I am still staring into the vibrating hazel eye of the white horse. My palms and neck still glitter with that golden resin; our mouths are still exchanging the sticky taste of tobacco, our hips still rocking together with the otherworldly notes of the harp.
The heavy use of imagery and descriptive language definitely creates an ethereal, other-wordly atmosphere at the show, but at times, the same language becomes confusing or unclear. I like that the narrative goes back and forth between the performance and the girl, woven together by the a common thread. Also, not sure if the quotations are CocoRosie song lyrics or not?
ReplyDeleteThis has a surreal quality that for the most part works given the altered state being described. There are moments that it becomes perhaps too hard to grasp; it's all right if you (the narrator) are not feeling grounded, but the reader needs to remain grounded in the ungroundedness. This is lyrical and a pleasure to read. I'd tighten it up as much as you can. Try to condense these posts into little 500 word gems.
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