From Scantily Clad Press

KATE

She was cat-eyed and turtlenecked,
flicking her kretek over a pop-can,
shale bangles jangling like so many
airport tambourines. She was fur-
tongued and blurry-worded, wobbly
on her ankles, top-heavy and moue-mouthed,
powder-nosed and sloppy, bursting from
her barstool like a weasel from a mulberry
bush. Her teeth were rows of ice in a tray;
her poems Rorschach blots on a page.
And the stick-fig-faux-scoliosis pose?
Stage-wise, she had one of those,
and she worked it like any blank-faced waif
in shredded runway clothes. In crowds
she laughed alone. Her soul was lost but
her cry had heart, and when she asked we fell
apart and spotted her the dough. Which she
probably blew on blow. And that’s the last we knew of Kate.

© Brooklyn Copeland 2008