Labor Day Weekend, A Prelude

Dripping with incessant gold – lavishly
indifferent, but aware of you and me (she likes
an audience), magnificently narcissistic,
rapturously falling over into and around her own

abounding lolling rolls of precious fleshly pelf –
in orgiastic foreplay with herself – Manhattan
in late summer flaunts it – taunts in more than
usually blatant ways – transvestite courtesan

who’s popped her corset stays like an Edwardian
pink-stocking-ed mistress to a foreign king
whom she’ll meet only on these sorts of torrid
perfect days – when nothing but the butter

of the sun plays on their untoward splay
of rump and thigh and florid cloud-sky-plied
extremities – without a thought, she grants us
the considerable grand amenities of watching

her: we’re simply on the sidelines where
we ought to be. The king is drunk – he doesn’t
care – and oh, the funk he’ll have to bear
tomorrow morning when she’s dumped him.

We’re the little flitter-glitters who reflect her blunt
erotic flashing naked glimmers back to her –
how she shimmers! “Hold the mirrors this way,
little queers!” – she whispers at us –

throatily, but clear. And soon the king will
snore, early fall will pour, and she will find all
notions of our adoration one big bore.
And honey, she will not be this way anymore.

.