for Cody, an English major

1.
beats the Degas at the Musee des Demi Arts,
as you cleverly called it. A tour of pastel
dancers past their prime flaunting tulle
and Parisian hauteur? Fuck it. Let’s smoke

a cigarette. We walk to Four Green Fields.
The bartender says we drink like artists.
We’re Monet and Renoir under a thatched roof
they would have loved, drinking their debts,

arguing where light falls best, the distance
between easel and vision. Which friend
will find a buyer next? Which painting
will hang in damp, neglected galleries?

A woman with a parasol and nowhere to go.
A girl with a watering can pouring out the sun.

2.
It’s your turn to pick up the tab.
You don’t complain. This is the last time
we’ll walk to my place together, the city
backlit by dusk. We dream of starring in

a Merchant Ivory film with light like this:
demimondes lounging all day, sprawled
and complicated as a Jamesian sentence.
In whale bone corsets, we’d whirl through

a montage of gossip, white rum and men
until our Oscar-winning close-up, cameos
pinned like amber tears, and you ask:
How long will we pay loans? Why

did we read and study, read and study
artifice—we, a pair of artless students?

3.
In the club, drag queens strut like peacocks,
throw shade across the floor. They make it work.
We’ve all got bills to pay. But us? We buy
a final round of shots, sweeter for our ennui.

Strobe lights rattle green, gold, and red.
Boys disappear. We lose our buzz.
Even the queens won’t perform, too busy
preening their feathers. We’re not French,

but in the Belle Époque of our twenties,
futures unsure and uninsured. Let’s raise
a glass. Rum stings our throats—cut
cane. We drink until Paris glows inside

our minds—a disco ball, a shot glass
shattering. We drink until Paris burns.