Curtain Call by Amanda Lin Hayes
Associate poetry editor Jessica Hudson on today’s bonus poem: Amanda Lin Hayes’ “Curtain Call” is a golden masquerade of desires. We hope you enjoy the show.
Curtain Call
Palo Alto, California
I want a balcony like the one we found riddled
with hyacinths, birthing three summers in the middle of a drought.
I want to break into six-million-dollar homes with you.
I want the marble whether it is real or fake.
I want to dance, table-wined, at a masquerade. I want to swim
slowly, my soft extraordinary body
billowing like Claire Danes’ dress in a backlit pool.
I want you to swim with me. I want to be that backlit pool.
I want to be a lightweight planetarium so we can wipe
the constellations & just play dot-to-dot. I am not so good
at “guided activities.” I prefer the stoats & bullfrogs,
who seem altogether unperturbed by the moment
& its significance. At the brook where two highways meet,
I consider the significance of mud puddles, how their softness
approximates a womb. In their divot, space
for two bullfrog bodies, counterfeiting cut-up stars.
I want the heart of a wood frog & the exoskeleton of a cicada;
I don’t want tears yet, don’t want to birth a blood moon. For now,
I want to bake cinnamon rolls in a six-million-dollar home.
We can paint the floors sticky & eat on the sofa,
listen to Blood Orange on the surround-sound stereo. Then,
I want to clean up so well no one even knows we were here.
I want to put leaves in your hair although it’s never autumn
& only three trees in this godforsaken town
even change color. I want the etymology of a fever dream,
I want Friar Lawrence to marry us in a backlit cave
so we can pack our suitcase & get the Hell
to Mantua. Let us catechize the spruce tree, strip
the eucalyptus. We can sit at the edge of the river
watching blobs of oil bob & weep.
I want your body boundless as the sea.
Then I want an annulment. A clutch of arid heat.
Amanda Lin Hayes grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and currently lives in Los Angeles. She received her BA in English from Stanford University and is an incoming MFA student at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. You can find her work in Hobart, Yemassee Journal, and Puerto del Sol. If you cannot find her, she is probably looking at a bird.
