Floating World (Ukiyo)

In the demimonde they say rules don’t apply; even the law of gravity has been suspended. You can laugh

from the bottom bounce of a check. You can float. Women are more than ornamental: their arts are art.

A sailor spots his ship’s figurehead on her way to a meeting of the board. The glass ceiling hasn’t been shattered

but turned into a floor: like sea ice, blue, translucent, prone to cracks and groans. It will hold your weight

until spring, when the old order returns with its dark fins and foreclosures, its strip poker, its house that always wins.

Nature conspires with nurture again and an infant, fresh from its watery Eden, screams like a gull for your breast.