is tutting.
Watching them whispering amongst themselves. She stops the music - a slow violin instrumental of Sensual World - goose-walks en pointe towards the audience. Unsettlingly supple in her wrinkly, grey leotard. A few people titter nervously.
Not-Kate’s red,
crinkled lips are smiling graciously as ushers appear.
These men
are placing pinches onto neck napes. Fixing gazes to the stage.
She holds them; they are the tribute tonight, and she’s a princess
of patience and white greasepaint, nodding at the orchestra,
who is a man with saggy jowls
that pool over a wormy fiddle;
opening strains of This Woman’s Work.
Her throat extending in a sinewy scream: "Hee-HAWWW!"
reverberates
high into the Art Nouveau ceiling. Several people pass out and are laid at her feet like wilted petals.
Not-Kate-Bush, is crying
happy tears,
dancing in jerks and
hip-
thrusts,
opening her wet, wide eyes,
and she is perspiring,
and she is starting to feel beautiful
again.
Originally published by Ligeia Magazine, November 2022
Syreeta Muir has work published in Anti-Heroin Chic, MEMEZINE, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Roi Fainéant Press, Jake, and others. Her photography and art has been featured in voidspacezine, Barren Magazine, Bullshit Lit, Rejection Letters and The Viridian Door. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net for her work in The Disappointed Housewife, MEMEZINE, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Versification. Bluesky’s as @phantomsspleen.bsky.social.
