He picked up the skirt from the floor and handed it to Amanda, then quickly snapped a photo of her. Before he could snap a second shot, she grabbed the camera away from her fiancé.
Self-immolation without ostentation
a smile the match that sets the extraordinary flames aglow
one of the onlookers says you don't have enough insurance you weren't fully insured
and so you invent madness.
He looked at his empty hands. As he was asking for the camera back, reaching for it, she placed it in the cupboard with his cereal boxes and slammed the door shut, then said, "Right about now I could use a few nails and a nice big hammer..."
The fiancé reached around Amanda and opened the cupboard door, and they both went for the camera. She grabbed it before he did, managed to turn fully around on the kitchen counter, and started to open the compartment holding the film. Grabbing her by the arms, he attempted to turn Amanda toward him, but she held her ground and opened the compartment.
Smile without disintegration
a trick that summons stardom
you find a more visited country
emerge as a tourist attraction
courted, wined, embraced.
"Don't ruin the film," he warned, and grabbed for the camera. In their struggle, the camera hit the corner of the kitchen counter and bounced to the floor.
"What have you done?" he said, kneeling down to the camera, as if over an injured animal. She put her foot on his shoulder, gently, took a walk around his shoulders and neck and touching his forehead, making patterns on the top of his head.
"What are you thinking?"
"This is all so mixed-up."
"Massage my foot."
"What would that accomplish?"
"Make me feel good and perhaps yourself a little amorous."
"I don't think the camera's broken," the fiancé said, and started to massage Amanda's stockinged feet, his eyes closing in pleasure. "That feels so good," she said. "I'm doing this for you, my dear," he said, his explanation unenthusiastic, but his excitement grew. She placed her foot close to his mouth and asked him to lick the bottom of her stockinged foot, to find out if she was ticklish, a scientific erotic experiment. He did. She wasn't. She pointed out that he had a full-fledged erection, and he acted frightened. She placed her feet on his lap and massaged his groin area. He pushed her feet away.
"I didn't mean to hurt your camera."
"We will not have wine with dinner again," the fiancé said.
"It wasn't the wine," Amanda said, and hurried off to the bathroom.
And one day you disappear
an item in a newspaper
and the sweet jewelled words
of a local radio broadcaster
you are still there
you have invented madness
you have escaped
the cunning of the deities of others
deities who envy your madness.
VI
In the bathroom, her fiancé's bathroom, Amanda touched herself, he in the living room, deciding which video they would watch. She heard him call out that the three women on the three video boxes were wearing stockings, all of them. She put her fingers into her mouth, kissed them as a lover might, touched her nipples. Thinks of her poem, words as companions, lovers. Yes, the title. She wanted to write down, "And So You Invent Madness." Then she changed her mind, but the words seemed to adhere, like the memory of making love.
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