The Lap Dance Discovery

Poet: Amanda Lee-Plaisance

Can’t enter the club, it’s too late

She turns her back on bar stools and disco lights

The drone of sports casters mix with topless-bar boogie-woogie

All of it dissipates as we walk across the street

 

Two men run out and say that she promised

A private lap dance, tonight

I noticed they both had reserved seats

On their left hand finger

 

We’re shuttled into a trailer office

I see family pictures dispersed between old fishing lures

These kids won’t see their daddy before bed-time, tonight

 

I’m on guard

Confused on if I’m trying to keep people from coming in,

Or if I’m supposed to make sure these guys don’t hurt my Chicken

You see, We never had a safety word.

 

They said she had to dance to three songs

We only had a radio

 

She was still grinding during the commercials

I could hear the chair banging over and over

Against the wall

Her naked flesh

Hands holding her thighs and ankles

We didn’t have a safety word

 

She had a yeast infection so bad her vagina spat out the suppositories

We had to roll down the car windows to clear out the rotting stink

I don’t remember what we bought with that death money

Maybe it was fuel for a road trip out of that trailer park,

Far away from dodgy lap dance appointments

 

I got left in a Buffalo blizzard and continued on my way

I know she went back there,

Without a safety word.

 

1998 amanda

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