“We Strongly Prefer Experimental Verse”

Your sight is better than your hearing,
and trouble can come of that
when the chandeliers of the theatre’s
half-dark find a head of frizzled orange
and green by halves three seats over
cradling a tower of coat-folds,
program glints, paperback,
stilettos and bucket hat.
A small lurch into the back of her seat
pulls them closer, a slight tilt,
but they ride in place
with her closed eyelids
as the violin’s cadenza
of a body’s disarrangement
outdoes the conductor with
its very own atonal fury/
pizzicatos/faint caterwaul of bow
upside down on all four strings/
loud knock on wood/and skating
to the bridge on the E string
at the speed of stage lights crosshatching
the syncopation of violin
and heads crowded close in front

The tower leaning more by fractions
toward Pisa, her movement mute,
uncommissioned, unrehearsed,
yet breathtaking as Dame Evelyn Glennie’s
perfect percussive balance double dared
by the kettle drum’s blunder in the pause
and the orchestra’s final home to havoc
exploding in disaccords, crash
of silence, intermittent
ripples of applause