Nights

I. Mimi at the Cabaret Vert

MIMI la Brunette, each crimson evening

sways her silver serpent arms,

peals in half falsetto notes,

at the Cabaret Vert

And with greedy eyes the coarse-lipped men internally undress her.

But I sit crumpled by a marble-breasted table,

the curacoa is vitriol to my chapped, dry lips.