--- A R I A N A -S O P H I A   K A R T S O N I S

Magnolia was a tired drag queen
in a southern town the wrong size
for everything.
The classified ad read:
HOUSEMATE NEEDED.
IF YOU DON'T MIND MY PERFUME AND PLASTIC FLOWERS
THE OCCASIONAL SEQUIN GLINTING OFF THE BATHROOM TILE.
YOU PAY HALF RENT AND UTILITIES, SAVE FOR WATER.
I LIKE LOTS OF BUBBLE BATHS.

That's how I found her ten years ago
when I wandered through this place
slipped into its languid skin
and never left.

We lived on Charlemagne Avenue
on pretty lies and fluttery eyelashes,
glitzy shoes and slit dresses
cheapest fabrics but how they'd catch
the right light and run with it.

She found the boarded-off bit of me
in the box leftover from another life.
Then she was on a quest: collection scraps, rags,
tatters, trying to piece me together,
figure me out.

We're bored Magnolia and me.
So I pretend not to notice.
Her sifting through and sneaking,
the way her hair looks especially lackluster
when the glossy wigs come off.
She pretends not to notice my noticing.

Magnolia's in my briefcase again.
Old letters, photographs. Next she moves
to a beaten trunk with a faded sticker that reads
DELIVER TO M. HONOR, 103 BAXTER WAY
Not my name nor my address.

All along our street, the lightposts
are covered with flyers.
LOST CAT
My favorite neighborhood cat, in fact,
A black and white Persian named Abbey
Has disappeared and I'm not surprised.
Nothing beautiful can live here for long.
Magnolia's dresses--tacky things--fade on the hanger
and in the morning--her face seems shadowy, scuffed,
too scruffy and old.

In my next life, I'll be named Honor
and my secrets will be ashes
in a bulletproof chest
at the bottom of the sea
somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.

For now, like Magnolia, I'm up for grabs.
We're too tired to leave.
Fifteen furniture stores, three mental institutions,
(Magnolia always said it was a great place to sit down
and go crazy for a while.)
religious supply shops, called Praise Him and Worship Corner,
pawnshops and second-hand stores.
This is a town for giving up.

Sometimes, at night, when she leaves for work
the drag show at Flash Gordon's
I try on Magnolia's things
her scratchy gowns, her snagged stockings,
even the adhesive black dot of a beauty mark
which I pull from the sheet of backing,
placed above my upper lip just so
the way she would. I crank up tubes of greasy lipsticks,
read off their illicit names: Crushed Roses, Moon Flower,
Bleeding Heart. Morning is washed clean
with cold cream, swirls in colored water
down the drain.

In the next room, she's rifling through
my suitcase, my chiffonier, my files,
looking for something she'll never find:
a bit of shininess
and who I am
and who she is because I'm here.
The clues she finds flutter centipede-swift
--so many fake eyelashes
that sparkle from the stage
with needle-strips of silver foil
but up close turn false
and flimsy, disappearing.

I want to tell her it's all disguise.
There is no essence. The torn envelopes,
creased receipts, loveletters, postcards
from people grown distant at best-lie.
The photographs, only lost
pictures of a time already changed before the flash fades.