So, I sent this poem off almost a year ago, and now it's going to be published in Picayune Literary Magazine. "Oh, irony" is all I have to say.



Ballroom Lap Dance

My shame, spiraled in the tulle
of my dress, lives in a box in the basement—
a granddaddy long-leg playground.

With Charon’s pile of coins oppressing
one side of the tiny boat, I rode into
Tartarus, and I can remember the look
on my grandmother’s face. I was a stupid girl,
a Prufrock in a golf club reception dodging
the class I can never have—now, never want.

(A baby Republican incarnate, influenced
by the rich, I’ve grown from that selfishness.)

Like a lap dance in a high class estate,
I stood cutting the cake, cutting my name,
cutting my freedom, ignorance.

I regret my anti-minimalist ways.

And I lost my blue garter that day. I have
a feeling that it’s underneath a pew
somewhere, betrothed to my gluttony.