Andy Warhol Left Those Parties by Midnight
        Sorrow everywhere.
                —Jack Gilbert

You will not wake at 7
tomorrow morning and
start working as I've read
he did, will not wonder until
9 or 11 a.m. if you can fly
Berthe to San Francisco
to confirm sorrow everywhere.

You created Berthe in a story.
She is a character,
and if you exit the club
with only that lilac tattoo
on the kissable dip of
your wrist you will work
on her in the morning
like she is a face and you are
plastic surgeon to the stars
instead of a writer of stories
you are not sure anyone reads.
There is a woman.

Her breath is jasmine, no,
hibiscus, no, ancientan
Egyptian myrrh
rubbed on the royal dead
who foresaw death as
beloved of symbolists
who see you in thresholds
and on a journey.

Beneath a silver globe
of disco you and the real woman
are felines howling.
Her dress of velvet mauve.
Oil-of-lavender skin.
A baby-breath nipple caressed
by a crushed strap sliding.

Andy Warhol would
slip away to a life of control
and productivity,
two words at a loss on
a dance floor with a remote
of secret flesh, in mirrors.

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Copyright © 2017 Sarah Sarai All rights reserved
from Geographies of Soul and Taffeta
Indolent Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission