Old Hollywood at a Bar in San Francisco

Warning! 

She sips from the mouth of her bottle with

an aimless glance across the counter

or perhaps through a past.

…a chemical known to the State of California

to cause harm to the female productive system.

Today the trolley carries more glances.

The city broadcasts a night of dancing.

She could still smell Chinatown like a nightclub.

Hear the clink of glasses and the washing applause

on that floorshow framed by swirling caterpillar clouds and chandeliers.

Gold paint and an eyelid made tall.

Her brows the curved edge of a coin 

or a shell belonging to the tide.

Show me what you got, girls!

Sing like this choice is yours.

She is beautiful.

Dance like it is a lost opportunity.

She lets the sequined petticoat shine and

flicks the bright, feathered fan 

reaching 

with all its spines like the moment before the bow.

Gives them a leg or a clean fold of clothes for a coin

and be a lipsticked girl for a jazz stage and

have the stockings be found in a part of a closet

from when your mother was a wild thing! 

said again and again.

What was the slew for my girls for the new century?

Sweat and leave it on like a vase’s shine.

Sprawl on a velvet ottoman 

and be shot 

glamorously on the oriental rug.

Dance off the time on her dress with the patrons

and have her hips tell you a labor tale

and when the cigarette on her tongue

makes way for her liquor another

unbeautiful language is born.

The lanterns are cued.

We could expect, at any moment,

the crying doll face to run down the sloped alley 

with her heel straps coming loose.

Protagonistic desperation.

A chip on her cheek.

An eyelash’s worth of reckoning.

A black smudge on the ground of that alley 

or on the bar floor 

cigarette-spat

from the pout of a woman never told to wish.