It’s not The Cotton Club, Voodoo Lounge, Studio 54,
but tonight it’s enough. She’s got headliner eyelashes,
center stage cheeks, pale thigh peeking out from behind
black sequins. Her sleek dress is a thrift-store treasure

resurrected, a backwoods Mackie knock-off, and here
the weekend swingers watch her woo the microphone,
a cherry-mouth garnish on a Manhattan song: she’s a knock-
out with teased hair. She knows what they can’t give her

tomorrow comes easily in this make shift lounge, amnesiac
alcohol atmosphere like a truck stop on the way out of town.
She’ll sing until the spotlight polishes her teeth into stars, until hot
pink neon teaches her a hundred ways to glow in the dark.