down to nothing, his tongue wormy in my throat—it was my first
visit & my gynecologist grabbed my sweetness, said, 
Don’t tell anyone. His apey arms still covering me, I popped 
back outside to my friend Craig in his blue Impala (I didn’t have a car) & 
I remember what I was wearing, the green & white checkered
girlie shirt (bright, lively) & he said, How’d it go?

Fine, I said, & we headed home. 51 south around Maytide & 
I had to pee, so we stopped at Joey Carbone’s Cocktail Lounge 
(really a low-level strip joint) & when I wandered the brown hallways 
in my suburban belted coat, one of the girls popped 
her head out of a doorway like a bad-ass gidget & said dirty loud:
You the new dancer?

& for a second I was that wild & flexible & 
could she see the stripper in me? The doctor’s squirmy tongue was still
licking. I wanted to be what she needed & now I was qualified. 
Something 
had happened to her I bet, no one 
gets to look so hard so young unless—I said No,
I’m looking for the bathroom. 
						Jesus Christ! 
			she said, Where the hell is she? & popped 
			back to her cave.

Years later when they closed & the strippers went down the street
to Stiffy’s & their johns or back to being stay-at-home moms, the
workers were stripping the paint from the joint’s marquee—& quit one day after half 
the name & for 24 magnificent hours, the building existed as “Joey Carbone’s Cock”
& not cocktail lounge & it was withered, flaky, but big—
for the first time, as big as he said it was.

Listen to a reading of the poem.