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To Don Winter's previous piece

Strip Bar: Hamtramck

Just off I-94 in Hamtramck
the goddamn of music
was going on.
The dancer came out
dangling money carelessly.
She danced out of her clothes.
She looked at my face
as if it were a small tip,
but Christ she was good,
and when she shook her hair loose,
beautiful. All her bones floating in milk.
Sweetheart, the others called her.
Honey. Doll. For each of them
she smiled. I envied how
she let the backs of their hands linger
at the very top of her thigh.
When she finally came to me,
I stuck a dollar bill
where my eyes had been.
Her face had the alert sleepiness
of a cat's. She smiled
vacantly, moved on to the next dollar.
I drifted into the night air.
The lights on my rig pushed
the dark aside, moved me
towards no house, towards no one waiting.

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