In Limelight

I push through the crowd at the Starry Plough—it’s open mic tonight—and sign my name, drop it in the hat. Lights still glare day-bright in the pub; people grin and shout and multiply in the pre-show-bright. I am blushing. Justin pulled me here.

Beer. One for Justin, but not me, I’m nineteen. I lean toward his ear. “Please?”

The lights dim. Justin sits. I sit. The MC, an Irish woman about forty, hops onto the stage. “Anyone under twenty-one?”

I stand. Me. She tells me I’ll go first. The stage lights cool to blue. A cold blue.

She steps down.

I climb up.

The mic’s too high, I don’t move it. I shift my weight to my other foot, it’s not better that way. I shift back. “This is poetry,” I say—apologize. In the dim pub, I notice too many guitar cases. People came for music. I pull my poem out of my pocket and unfold it. Paper-opening: phone-static. I breathe.

I read:

“The Planets Align”

Spring infants in a cold desert. We both

lie on our sides—the fetal position—facing

each other. Heads touching. Frost-scraped

sand but I am

violently hot,

shivering.

My whole body clothed.

Sand, an ever-multiplying number of

grains, pouring toward an edge. Hourglass

sand, neglecting the time.

Sand; say it a hundred times and it means infinity and

paralysis, or an orgasm. Blue night.

Dim stars and Mars and shadows wavering over combed

sand. The moon.

Caress the moon’s craters. Cold, cold

dents in eternity. Silver then

pink then white then

tender. Shoot an arrow into space and it will never hit

anything, the chances are devastating.

Light a match.

Push.

Lush

lips

pursed

like rind, pain, sugar.

Breathe.

Grain-vein-

pulse-pulse:

pant.

Hic-

cup

and

howl

in

the

night-bed-morning-moon joy.

The

chan-

ces

are

devastating.

I jump down.

I run to the table. People are cheering, clapping. My arms are hot-red, heart having a beat-seizure. Justin grabs me and kisses me like sunlight washing out limelight and my throat tightens like I’m about to cry and I don’t cry but exhale. Pink.

The stage-lights are pink now. A young man is singing, strumming on an acoustic. He’s good. No one’s looking at me. That’s good.

“You did good,” a man at our table says to me, looking at the pink-acoustic stage. He’s friendly. The whole pub is pink-acoustic-kind.

I smile. “Please?” I say to Justin, looking at his drink. “A shot?”

“You don’t do shots.”

“I want to.”

The man strums the last chord of his soft-world song. The lights smudge to orange, then gold. “To celebrate,” I say.

A girl, not older than I, steps onto the stage, into the yellow-warm light. Rachel Angel. I say again: “please.”