Stand Near Me

She’s one to watch

Unbeatable on the floor

For her full-length replica

Words

A chance in hell, she says

I am

Entirely cut out for this

She tips a bottle to her wrist

Her wrist to her neck

Ignore the features of the room

Because the girl’s for the win

Earlier she’d seen three of the same man

Climbing out of a taxi

Three

Our gamer knows this to be

A lucky, lucky sign

Once they passed

Nothing but a hum of anybody else

People are clouds

She’s one gold tooth winking at the front

And several caps inside

An obsessive ritual persists

Pure, capital O

Tramlines run under the city still

Here at the hotel

She picks a page

Writes the opponent’s name

And marks it with a tick in green

A reminder

There are small ways to punish oneself

And I am not here them

Lost titles? I want them back, she says

That’s how I feel

Thirst is not an attitude

I waited my time

And tonight’s a month-old moon

Pure, capital O

Waiting her time

She’s flipping channels

With a remote control

Nothing will suffice

Not a drama in any language

It strikes her

No song has a sweet enough touch

The television is turned off and on

Exactly twelve times

She wishes

She could unhear an interview she gave

They’d said they’d been watching her

And she’d used the word

Annihilate

Stand near me, for luck, they’d said

Before you break your streak