Electricity, 1876

When I came to, in that year

of bamboo, then carbon, then

filament, I learned to make

my own light.  At night, my breasts were incandescent,

soft as white spotlighted jades.

And the school girls who knew

how to see in the dark brought me

back in their arms.  We set up our atalier in the city's

reddest section.  We plied the marquee

makers with our sugared tips, took

their likenesses with powdered flash;

some took their last names.  I just held their trembling faces.

When the men changed, grew

more famous still, we painted our faces

in an electric gold the blind could see.

And Tesla hung our brothel lights, made our copper eggs

stand on their ends - but I took Edison

to my bed.  For him, I coiled a wet-

licked curl and buried it in a bulb,

I pressed my hands together.  The city smoldered, then burned.

--Brittany Cavallaro