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Quixotic Dancer |
The ghost stripper peels off layers of ectoplasm,
shimmies till you get the willies.
She teases you as if she were a live girl,
grinds her nonexistent fanny against your thighs.
She sighs for her lover, a coal miner
who trudged underground and never came up.
His bones are turning to diamonds in the shaft.
Hers are ground into ecru powder for North Beach girls.
The wallpaper’s peeling with heat and damp.
Velvet to the touch, it’s embossed with sad roses.
In 1906, the room she shared with two
Cantonese hookers shook, then burned.
You make it rain silver dollars right through her.
She lifts her face like Danae in the shower of gold.
copyright 2019
Jan
Steckel |
