LIVE AT THE WIGGLE ROOM

Patrick O'Reilly

tonight, supreme 

drag queen Emma Nation appears 

onstage in a floor-length 

diaphanous gown

cut from one continuous piece 

of lawn—the spiritus she salvaged 

when the squad last raided Mme Tessva’s.

Her face painted parlour white, she slinks into 

her signature number, a tin-can alley 

corruption of “Johnny, Remember Me.”

She howls, hisses, smashes plates

if the audience dare sing her hook, 

but something in her carriage seems

to delight in a choir. A picket line 

of plywood trees behind her sways; a stagehand blows 

wax paper combs and this 

is meant to be the wind. Without fans, 

who can say how she makes her gown 

wave and billow in such a way, how she 

so obscures her body under such a thin chemise. 

As the song contorts up to its climax, clinched, 

the audience follows her in, breath bated for 

the big finish: with the hem of her gown, 

she draws the white paint 

away. Three steady stripes, left to right, 

til no sign of her face remains. 

The garment plummets to the floor

like a shelf of seabirds 

diving. Where she stood, a bent gray

janitor who shunts the rags offstage.