The Cheap Seats (Studio 8)

Momma taught me and sis how to line our coats
with tin and fizz and the sugary holiness
that could make you purse your lips,
could pull from your mouth that voiceless,
glottal aah of satisfaction― when we’d go to
the cheap seats across town, pay a dollar
to shuffle past the ticket man,
to hear the sticky chatter between our feet
and the jelly splatter floor, and us three towheads
would nestle back in the burgundy sponge,
fishing these privileges out from our small coffers,
with egg-shaped fingernails, Momma lifted the tabs,
letting those cans hiss slow like a dynamite fuse
before popping them open; big for my age,
I’d kick off the heads of ghosts and prop my achilles
on their bony shoulders, and us three towheads
would smirk― a dollar each to watch the stars fade.