Revival at the Pillow Talk Lounge
She brings the thrum of bees with her,
dances beneath cherry lights & the speaker’s
thump-pulse groove. She sings her
bruises to the beer-soaked walls, honey-alto
rattling: Won’t you take me
to Funky Town / won’t you take me …
She drops low—
whispers sugar in my ear,
my folded bills sweat
between her breasts,
dozens of men pound the stage,
I am damp in my dress, swollen,
twitching in my seat.
She just shimmies, shimmers
snaps her fingers—purple talons and that
tone—head thrown back, curses loosed,
seven-league heart unlaced,
frenzy in her hips,
this rapture is for God
not some recycled room in a strip club,
not this bend of the Chattahoochee—
waters writhing through red clay and dreck,
licking the club’s back door, hoarding
skeletons in cement shoes,
blue girls with their pimp’s names
dope fiends and snitches,
failed hit men and the damned—
this is not the house of God
yet there she is.
Whipping around the pole,
back arched, heart bare—She is
the second coming,
and dear God
I believe.