an audience is like mercury

the way you can’t hold them or you trick yourself into thinking

you’ve got them, lucky I got a jaw

like a bear-trap the way I can hold you

with my monologue, hunt you with my monologue

I telephone a lick of lyrics from the footlights to the nosebleeds to the rafters to the stars

and they chain-spark it down the line, dominoes of sighs,

laughter, warming the velvet seats with

wonder