Live Nude Girls

 

Susan Slaviero

 

. . . . says the marquee, so I enter,

and it’s about what you’d expect. 

Watery gin, or scotch, a skinny

bottle-blonde with clownish

tits peeling off her pasties to the beat

of some ‘80’s dance tune.  A bunch

of sweaty old bastards at the front, tossing

away the last tidbits of paycheck, swollen

bellies hanging over those big,

shiny belt buckles—evidence

that the fast food industry is thriving—

and they have the rounded shoulders

of sherpas, but they’re only carrying

beer bottles and wallets.  I’d like to tussle

with the brunette that follows the pastie-girl;

she reminds me of my eighth grade

English teacher.  (Mrs. Woods, who I wanted

to walk in some morning, rip off her glasses

and shake out her hair, like some music

video babe.  Never happened.)  I gaze

at the pole she’s shimmying on and think,

(inexplicably), of those tight,

bored women you see

in the grocery store . . .

 

 

 

 

Susan Slaviero is a poet & editor living in a sleepy midwestern suburb. Sometimes she writes poems about pornography. (Or, perhaps she writes pornographic poems.  She can't really be sure.) Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals like Sein und Werden, Lamination Colony, ECTOPLASMIC NECROPOLIS, Zygote in My Coffee, and others.  She co-edits the online lit zine blossombones.