Alan Michael Parker

The Opera Wars

Having made a woman out of wood,
he draws a bow across her hips.

In the darkness that ensues
he imagines her at breakfast,

as she pads the Italian tile
in Lion King slippers, and croons

to the cappuccino, O my Pinocchio.
She winks in dialect, and sets herself

on fire at the stove, the smell the smell
of greasepaint burning, filling his brain

like sawdust fills a block of ash.
Meanwhile, life.

Next door, on the fire escape of a garret,
his rival is making mountains

out of broken dishes, humming
the intergalactic 5-note welcome

from E.T. And in the real mountains
another rival casts

thousands out of chocolate,
plays army on her butcher block,

where the Saracens ambush a Linzer torte:
rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-kapow!

Here's to you, mein Herr--
a chocolate bunny lifts a tiny stein

of chocolate milk, and throws
himself three stories

down into the milk-white snow.
More life happens. Terror.

The notes line up like soldiers,
like the glazed eyes

of opera-goers in their rows;
and the wars, at last, dwindle

to mere geopolitical hysteria,
speculation as to who has got the bomb.

---

Alan Michael Parker is the author of Days Like Prose and The Vandals. His third collection, Love Song with Motor Vehicles, is forthcoming from BOA Editions, Ltd. contents | next