Corinne Lee
Swimmer Lost in Lake (Midnight)

Bordering
the ochre bombsite were boutiques and condominiums,
fin-de-siècle dandies residing

in each.
For shame, my love, the view we had
from those mullioned windows

at dawn.
Why is it that the best revelations
wake too late (e.g., to achieve a pristine soul, aliases

must be
adopted). We pandered to moral panic. Yet where
can love be made but in a penthouse,

wrapped
in the decisive face paint, multicolored garb
favored by warriors of our tribe? Our not

peering
downward. From life as A Letting Room.
Now a slower and stickier

stroke
begins. Visions of the furred cup. Then an eye
in the plate’s center, observing—

return to SHAMPOO 22