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Improv 2, Week 6

Dolls (stanza 8)

At Baby Dolls, some wise guy thinks he’s funny:
A dollar for the doll, he slips his five
beneath her garter. She makes it come alive,
it disappears, he looks her up and down
upon her pedestal. A mere pronoun,
she leans against the pole as if to suffer
a different kind of passion, as if no lover,
no proper gentleman will ever touch her.
She strolls the strobe-lit stage where all must judge her.
He’s loud, has drunk too much: Me Tarzan, you Jane.
He bares his chest; she’s not allowed. In vain,
she looks away to the mirror across the room,
and briefly wonders who she fools or whom.
---------------------------------

Stripped

The Red Garter’s $5 cover strips me of my last ones.
I’m down a wad of cash that was thick as a condom three pack
but who’s daughter are you?
I won’t assume you’re a mother, whore, or sister, but surely
you have a father and he can’t possibly support
rubbing gloss off this stage with your crotch.
The creak of the stage when the music dies
pops just like her hip, like the cartilage of a ballerina.
I need her glitter to stop blinding me,
her perfume to stop pumping my saliva,
her to stop bringing my face to her chest,
rubbing me up and down her breast bone,
clenching my ears and steering me.
She’s waiting for dollars that her g-string won’t tear
when she pops the strap back to her thigh.
I am waiting for Charlie Pop to bill me
because for now I’m gonna sit here,
frustrated as she stares me down
in an attempt to look through me, read if I
am still waiting for more or ready to pony up
something other than a mere pronoun.

Comments

Jen Rivers said…
Hey Jeff, I really like this piece. There's a lot of fresh imagery and language available. I'm not sure about the long, three line quote. I want to know whose language this is (narrator's father, etc?) and why their voice interupts the narrator. Also, it's a bit lengthy. Maybe you could condense the language so it's less of a stop sign, or move it to different places to see how that would affect the reading.
February 18, 2010 at 1:07 PM
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