Strange Bedfellows [05]: Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Black and white drag queens
Meet your gaze
Staring from their Metro posters
The last day of her retrospective
Waiting outside
At Place de la Concorde
Gold neon of the ferris wheel
Rippling out in circles
The glare of it
Tumbling over us
Everything doubled
And gleaming in the rain
Waterfall mist of the fountains
White sulphur
We had to dance to keep warm
But worth it
Stepping into the bright
Each image in a neat frame
Capturing America
The darker sides
Grotesque, imperfect and real
Perhaps she saw too much.
One of them looked like us –
A teenage couple on Hudson Street
Embracing
Like they were the same being
Twin stars, luminous
Bound to each other
Odd and synchronistic
But things always were
With you
And I didn’t know
That in a few months
I would be on that street
Eating Mexican food
On the hottest of days
The fresh chilli
Glittering my throat
That love could come back
And repeat itself
A thousandfold
That we would happen again.
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