*edit Nov 13*
Every night, she stands on the corner of fourth and nothing
Waiting for a car to stop.
When one does, she hikes her bag higher up one shoulder
Drops the sleeve off the other
And walks,
With false nonchalance of the soul.
She leans down, low enough to tempt
High enough to withhold.
Carnation-red stained lips mouth the same words,
Every night
Coffee-stained teeth smile the same smile.
She never really smiles.
Prices and services are bandied about,
But she gets her way in the end
Because desperation is a good incentive.
Money comes in every night because
Her service isn’t really that expensive -
Her dignity may be cheap
But her rent simply isn’t.
The next night she’s there again
In a red leather skirt
And torn stockings
Her taffy-pulled legs seem to stretch out forever,
Caramel candy polluted with bourbon.
Sharp collarbones glare in the neon-lights.
Her head is down and her hair, coloured and re-coloured so much that she doesn’t know whether it was blond to begin with, black to end with, corrupted to brown all along the way,
her hair cascades down one side of her face.
Later that night when she plays her soundtrack of shrieks and moans
Depending on the part she has to play
It’ll be too dark for the man to see what she tries to hide
When he pulls aside the curtain of hair he won’t see the swollen scars
All he’ll see is gleaming breasts and dark nipples and more
Female flesh that he can control because he paid for it.
He won’t see her face.
When he goes home, he’ll see his wife’s face
And he’ll smile when he sees her smile at the carnations he brought her because carnations are her favourite flowers.
And he’ll forget the sidewalk hooker with the beautiful body and the scarred face.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Sidewalk Hooker
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
You know, I rather like this. I don't even have my usual litany of nitpicks to contribute.
I agree. Granted, I don't usually have a litany of nitpicks, but it's mostly just good. Though I'm not quite sure how I feel about the line "Drops the sleeve off the other"
I really like this poem. The one thing that throws me off and kind of bothers me is the last sentence of the second stanza. It seems syntactically awkward to me to repeat "her hair". I think if you meant to use repetition for a purpose, it loses its force because the chunk between the repeated phrase is so big. I think the sentence would flow better if you just said "Her head is down and her hair cascades down one side of her face, coloured and...etc" Other than that, I really enjoyed this poem :-)
I didn't notice that before, but she's right. If you take out the descriptive phrase, you get, "her head is down and her hair ... her hair cascades...", so I'd say either restructure it as Rachel mentioned, or just get rid of the second "her hair"
Thanks for the comments guys. About the second stanza, though, the bit "coloured and re-coloured so much that she doesn’t know whether it was blond to begin with, black to end with, corrupted to brown all along the way" is at a different pace from the rest of it. It's sort of, I guess, like a fast paced interlude, and then, I repeat 'her hair' because I'm coming back to the original pace and thought. I suppose it'll be clear when I read it out tomorrow.
Post a Comment