A Chandelier Poem by Isabel Szurlej

A bar of ghosts—champagne staged for exposure,
cold bottles sweating under diamond lamps:
The light is brutal: reporter-flash through smoke—
each glitter reads as evidence, not glamour.
Fruit—small red planets in a bowl—seem sweet,
but up close, thick colour clings to their skins
in trowelled seams.

Behind the counter: something dressed as her—
a corseted silhouette, a mane of hair,
a face half-erased by haze and afterthought.
The mirror will not swear what it has seen;
it keeps a bruise of light, a smeared refrain,
a chandelier that hangs like frozen breath.

Here abundance stiffens into ritual—
shine gives testimony, not celebration.
In back, tall hats linger, undevelop'd still—
the place conceals their final countenance.
Only in the glass do their toppers live—
no bodies stand beneath the lifted brims.

Tasted, the night is full of masks.
Blur replaces laughter where it should reside—
a leaning shape, unlit—anonymous,
the room dreams it back wrong.