“Changing Room”
The breath’s slow
drum-brush marks the end of Gillian’s time.
Her hair’s haphazard marathon, swaying
with the slowest jazz of afternoon. Detectives
wandering at her breast; the nipple’s darker trilby.
A black thief hair, returning to its crime.
*
Now, amongst the sheets, there is
a trace of blacker hair, curled and blunt
as shorthand. I watch her move, the blankets
fanned across the mattress like a deal of cards.
Her foot beside an ashtray shell, its butted
cigarettes settled into parquetry. She dresses
as a child might in a changing room, all
half-under things. And what she’ll do tonight
comes out of silence like a talking in her sleep.
She’s leaving; and the similes are gone.
A borrowed room, and everything quite suddenly
and only like itself: this coat, this coat.
This floor, this floor.
— John A. Scott, Singles