Day 15 of Poetry Month - Rio, 1977

            Red lights spill over us,

            as eye-lashed and concert-gowned we stand

            surrounded by violins and flutes, cellos and kettle-drum  

            waiting for our cue.

            Burt, seated at the piano, smiles up at us

            and I each night, like a mantra,

            tell myself over and over, “remember this, remember this…”

            Then, one night in Rio, after cocktails at The Green Door,

            (its reviews so splendid in the latest VOGUE that 

            how could we not avail ourselves of its delights…)

            There is traffic.

            Who could predict how these Brazilians drive?

            And so the curtain rises without us this disastrous night.

            “wo-wo, wo - wo – wo -wo – wo- wo -wo…”

            (And do you know the way to San Jose?)

            Burt’s hands on keyboard,

            one arm raised for the downbeat and

            I miss the entrance.

            The look of love 

            has left the building.

            Hands slam on keyboard,

            crash below angry glare.

            One night like this threatens to erase all the rest.

            Later, between shows

            a meal is served downstairs by dark-skinned girls,

            dressing-room helpers with gardenias in their hair,

            tight, short skirts, over tighter asses and muscular legs,

            working hard at glamour, their lashes longer even than ours.

            It is, after all, the seventies.

            And it is three days later before we notice

            they are all transvestites.

            A cockroach scurries across the floor.

            We dine with feet suspended.

© Sally Stevens 1997