Drawing by Susan C. Price
Score
By Eric Meub
Score
By Eric Meub
[Originally published on November 12, 2016]
The curtain rises in its gilded frame
upon the final act of La Boheme.
He marks the heroine’s consumptive life,
and then compares this creature to his wife.
Her profile pivots just enough to shift
her eyes to his. The way her eyebrows lift
above her satin sleeve, he wonders how
to judge her beauty. Could he woo her now?
A bantering in bed, a nothing much
about mortality if toes should touch.
Their arias had never been unloosed,
bassoons and clarinets not once seduced.
Puccini pulls her from her velvet seat
to vacancies her husband can’t complete.
He grasps her hand: lost Mimi’s on her bed,
Rodolfo at her side. They are not wed.
| Copyright © 2018 by Susan C. Price & Eric Meub Eric Meub, architect, lives and practices in Pasadena, the adopted brother of the artist, Susan C. Price. They respect, in their different ways, the line. |
Susan’s pregnant drawing of faces, Eric’s fecund verbal narrative of description, allusion, innuendo, suggestion, a reader’s feast that tastes and teases and lasts to savour.
ReplyDeleteAlmost startling, the way Eric uses words so elegantly. Good stuff Eric and Susan!
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