I dug this poem out from an old manuscript, because sometimes I think about that alternate universe where I am a lounge singer in a dive bar off the interstate.
Suburb Diva
It’s not The Cotton Club, Voodoo Lounge, Studio 54,
but tonight it’s enough. She’s got headliner eyelashes,
center stage cheeks, pale thigh peeking out from behind
black sequins. Her sleek dress is a thrift-store treasure
resurrected, a backwoods Mackie knock-off, and here
the weekend swingers watch her woo the microphone,
a cherry-mouth garnish on a Manhattan song: she’s a knock-
out with teased hair. She knows what they can’t give her
tomorrow comes easily in this make shift cabaret, alcohol
atmosphere like a truck stop on the way out of town.
She’ll sing until the spotlight polishes her teeth into stars, until hot
pink neon teaches her a hundred ways to glow in the dark.