Drag queen is propping up the bar, cig hanging

askew, bitching about the guys backstage.

As panther breezes in to mop up the last remnants

of mankind with bloodied claws. “You stop right there!” she shrieks.

“We’ll have no more of that! We’re closed! You’ve had your fill.”

She wrestles the panther—both hissing—to the ground.

Panther lets out a terrible wail, like demon

exorcised, takes fright and in a puff is gone.

Kit-Kat is spared destruction, trembling a bit,

needing another G & T to steady her nerves,

turns to the slaughtered barman, then to the absent

cameras, shows her fake claws, and snarls. “I win”.

Helps herself happily, and toasting no-one,

to one more cocktail for the road. The girl quits,

 tottering out on heels, and with a huffing

‘I quit,’ only for emphasis, leaves only

inverted commas, like clothes shed in a striptease

show, behind.

*

“For, the original ending

is not that of blue-stockinged Antigone.

Too pure and stuck-up for any true catharsis

to kick in and kick some ass. As for that dreary

Electra and her brother. Puleez! Call the police!

What do you take me for? Let not the likes of those

two ever darken my door with all their daddy-

issues moaning. Nor that sad and unlistened-to

loser Cassandra. That’s not the kind of news

we want to hear. Nor weirdo drop-out Bacchants

ecstatic at their raves. Nor Hecabe (who’s she

to me?), nor man-fighting Andromache, or

Polyxena – all foreign — got up in gloomy

garb. A bunch of Goths. Nothing if not depressing

that.” Mouth sags to the side. Lipsticked and smeared.

“And please don’t get me started on that insipid

Ophelia and her moody brother. Oh no!”

The drag queen struts. And hums and slurs a little

incoherent but triumphant song:

“I am a beast with attitude and it is various.

I rear up, lie in wait, cower, and sleep,

or just pass by and wink.

For handsome is, as Mamma used to say,

as handsome does.

And so I say:

I am the biz. I swank.”

*

‘Mine’s the finale!” growls the sphinx in sudden

grab for the final triumph, one last obscene scene-

stealing, blind-siding the diva from off-stage.

Back for the last hail-Mary pass at slasher-pic

destruction at the very end, snatching

the trophy from the livid queen, indignant

on the stage. The eagle droning and hovering

like a doting mother over the beast. As if

she’d laid it. As if hatching were due. They tussle

and drag queen claws her trophy back. Tosses

her boomeranging coronet at the drone

and brings it down. Strolls out onto the streets empty

of souls. Skirt round her knees.

*

“Last human being on earth’s

a post-op trannie.” She grins. “Some justice that.”

She muses. “Will be a trifle lonely, mind you.

Get used to it, however, I suppose.” She slings

an arm around a pink & grinning cartoon cut-out

of the panther. And they stroll, kicking and dancing

off into the red-eye of the setting sun.