Le Salon

Vibrating her body with your bloodied-sore fingers

she is toned and cool and dances sideways

indifferently french swivelling on her pivot

that oak cavity, empty belly-full of harmonious grit.

You drag her home, she squeaks on her wheels, and you,

you heart-creaking soak, splashy with self-pitying demons;

all the way to Orleans you go.

who carries who? one has to ask –

your red sneakers, as they stumble up the cobble?

or those inverted lion paws, this city,

this lion on its back, toying with you?

it would maul you if it could but the jaws lie buried in history.

You tread from pad to pad, you and your red sneakers

and your girl, bumping out of tune with each ragged trip on the road.

She gave you her all and you, and you yours,

you are happy to have bled on her steely strands tonight

Who carries who? The patron, flaunting the history there

on the walls in black and white as if he cared a damn?

It is that which loves the sailor inside and nothing else. Or

the songstress willowy before the hippotomamus art and all the soulful carvers who

sculptured this emblem for you. Who carries who? Saint rita or the tunnel light queen or the buddha’s thigh or the volcano in your gut?

They come to hang their heads and drown, all three incarnate, at the bar, they sit in their various incarnations tossing a dime into some spirit or other.

Candelabras, checked pizza mats, the thumping red sneaker on the old worn grey tiles, stamping out all the aches of your desperate yesterdays

to be sure many more to come but who carries who?

One has to ask again and again,

even after the revolution,

especially after the revolution…

the salon?

Or the yellow plastic fish nets.

© Rebecca Rennie 2006