Now that I know she is lip-syncing

I can’t watch her,  I can only listen.

The ballet dancer with broken toes

keeps returning to my dreams and I

try to forget all the card tricks I know,

*

Play it again, Sam.  Lay it all out.

The invented genealogies and fake IDs,

your talking parrots and loaded dice.

We live to be fooled, to escape what

we know, to go with whatever works.

*

I could watch her walk all day.  She

wouldn’t have to sing or speak a word.