|
STRIPTEASE
Heavy
alarm on the gross bass drum.
‘Take
two steps forwards, mademoiselle.’
Her
first striptease: nightclub volunteer.
Throw
out a scandalous web of chords.
Direct
on her equivocal light.
She
timidly eyes the band’s top man
raising
shoulder-high her fingertips.
Sees
in the smoky doorway—him.
Pink
pale hands elongate across
to
the straps of her black dress. Straps
slack.
She
polishes her shoulders’ nuded shells,
surrendering
the hollow armpits up.
And
yet she hardly wavers, until
the
dress dissolves, slips watery away,
catches
a hip, splashes, then, freed,
is
a brook bestrid by her high heels.
The
music, a voodoo incantation,
calms
her spread near-juvenile nerves
into
immobile silhouette.
Infinitely
slowly this she who
has
evaded her adolescence by one year
makes
an inspired gesture, dreaming.
With
a disturbing slowness she
frolics
teasingly with mauve stocking-tops,
and
little by little the flesh, to those
in
need, is revealed hiding in
sweet
underthings, incensed by drums.
The
thought that she is almost naked
acts
like a willow whip. Blood
spurts and spots
her
cheeks, and from new eyes a light
wipes
the obscurity, and no one breathes.
A
smile glides from her into herself
as
if slow tom-toms filled her glades.
She
dances, and not a knowing dance,
not
to speak truly a dance at all,
only
the hesitant halting sway
of
an insect from its chrysalis.
Before
her, in the darkness, breath returns
in
an incredulous gasp, and enters her.
The
breath, the eyes, they enter.
She
slides one hand behind her to undo
a
brassiere strap. Brusquely
the cymbals cope,
the
woodwind fails, or sobs.
Thumbs
descend to the thin two sides
of
her skimpy white cleft briefs,
her
knees lift and her ankles follow
and
every contour of her land is free.
The
music underlines her pauses
as
she takes it though love’s every phase.
Her
shivers infect the music’s skin
and
in the dark the eyes stare at her eyes
as
her hands pretend to play below
and
her whole body’s shaken out somewhere.
And
in the smoky doorway always—him.
Alan
Marshfield
top
of page
note |
