Amphora

I spend three hours looking for the bad student film you were in your sophomore year of college.  The kids have mullets and smoke reds. 

They hold their cigarettes wrong.  

Your hair is long.  

The cigarette hangs perfectly from your lips.  I hope you don’t move to New York. 

I see a self-tape video of you singing 

a song from Cabaret on your website.  

You go flat on all the high notes.  

And I can’t hear you in some of the soft bits.  It sounds lovely.  

It is the most beautiful song that has ever been sung.  I hope you don’t move to New York.  

It’s not like I couldn’t love you here.  

It’s not like I wouldn’t sit up at my window -  

Listening to you call my name -  

A different way every night -  

Keeping the spark between alive -  

Keeping the watching eyes enraptured - 

Until the Shubert’s shut us down.  

When my pupils stop dilating - 

I see you 

A rocket jet rockette 

A candied chorus girl -  

Kicking your leg high in a line of thousands.  

Face reduced to a flashbulb -  

- So many tricks of light.  

I hear that Atlanta is the New Hollywood.  

You should go There. 

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Bio:

 

Jaden Tyler Urso is a former teenage girl. When she was a real teen girl she had a few short plays published by Samuel French (now Concord Theatricals). Now, her work is forthcoming in Lauren Moon Literary Magazine, among other places. You can typically find her directing queer versions of Shakespeare plays. She is a current undergraduate student at New York University. Yell at her on twitter @jadentylerurso.