Rope and The Discipline of Michael

by Natalie Schlosberg

Michael, shall we drink?
Sometimes, I’m very well
At separating these glass towers
From the midtown lights, usually.
But I walked here barefoot, and drunk off the taxi cab, the plastic diamond choker. The pairing of fast food and champagne.
“Sure, Dolly.”
I am: subway-car-home. Vomiting plebeian and the tiniest pink estrogen pills. Below. I arch over Columbus Circle and wonder what it was like before.
Do you want to sushi or fuck?
(The certainty of Michael, under white gauze of beer too mediocre for such a profession, reminded me of 14 years old. Bruised Lolita, even then, but in car fumblings. We were all vampires then.)
“Neither.”
(Many sins but no soul possessions)
Michael, I am thinking about carving
The certainty of which you tie me
In the blackest rope. Where did it come from? Why are all your girls, and perhaps like your patients,
Barely breathing on your slow, dying skin?
“I hope this poem of yours has a happy ending”
Whispers a smirk in the black, the tunnel before the 1 train approaches,
Suspicious and hopeful all at once.
Michael pulls tighter and extends my body to 59 stories above
The 59th street
And the tragedy in the night below.