Esmé Wonders How She’ll Die

– for Lisa

…perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eyes lie to me? – Terry Pratchett

I shot the boy
whose piano chanted
in the monastery of rain.

In two days I was
three days closer to the rope,
a burlap ingénue with
two lines and a dying scene.

I shot the girl who
shot the boy who
played the piano
as Vaudeville died.

No matter how I try
“lonely” keeps rhyming with “only.”
No matter that I fly
a blackbird circle round the moon.

I shot the girl with the butterfly machine:
hand-crank angel
wedged in the headlights,

oxide smile forgotten like a coaltown.