LAP DANCE

by Howie Good

Last night I went to a movie at the Upstate,
Marisa Tomei was in it, she played an aging stripper,

but without the cellulite and droopy ass,
who worked at a club in Jersey called Cheeks,

black walls, myopic lighting, loud music,
the graveyard of empires, where a lap dance

in the VIP Room cost you 60 bucks
and the vinyl siding salesmen from Trenton

got hard as she gyrated on stage in a G-string,
her eyes strangely dead, the boarded-up windows

of a once-prosperous downtown appliance store,
I wanted to tell her, Oh, Marisa, don’t be sad,

you’re beautiful, instead the guy sitting
behind me kept crossing and uncrossing his legs

and kicking the back of my seat.