red booth
review

His vanity requires no response 
and breaks a woman’s mirror:
One woman, hardly aware 
of her departed lover, slips

into her make up, whereupon
a second accepts the acting life.
For Hollywood off Broadway, 
she donates body parts to the poverty

of a man’s senses of self. A great
nothing blows her skirt up, and she
embeds her feet into the cement 
of her shadow. With his boar’s head 

pelvis and oyster in hand like his neighbor, 
Mr. Fillmore, buries himself in toys 
leaving behind a pile of Mimi scouring 
the shallow years for a woman.
 

 - Rich Murphy