The Jester and The Queen

After we fucked,
he took out his tennis balls
and began to juggle.

His balls and tennis
balls, balls and tennis balls, spun
and shook like spinning tops

till I puked.
How dare you, he taunted

The next day, I left this poem
to sit like bread, quietly.
till it started to rise and breathe.

Months after I left
New York, I would rewrite, and write,
and write it again. Till in the poem,

I would be able to walk down
the staircase, undo the lock
and step

out into the outer air. The poem
would end like this: with a door

clicking shut, and then the song
of a woman singing with a voice like dusk.