purple light, red light, strobe light, black light, she walks on stage in tight white turned neon,
wipes the pole long and lean with a wash rag, turns to talk to the DJ through the beaded curtain,
slinks to the shaft and climbs it with ease in two shimmies,(in my mind she’s ten and climbing a
thirty-foot flagpole)flips upside down in a graceful gush of fluttering glitter, spins and spirals
with butterfly arms reaching out, slides to the floor belly down like a slithering snake, but not
before clicking her nine-inch sparkly heels – Clack, Clack -like an upside-down Dorothy wishing
for home – then does a cat cow and a meow stretch before she twerks, tosses her blond ringlets
,batting eyelashes – (in their wildest dreams I doubt any of these patrons would guess her mother
is in the audience on this, her farewell night) - she's radiating ecstasy and we are riveted by her
grace and pure comfort in the spotlight so bright (just yesterday I was running behind her bike
without training wheels, to keep her from falling), this complex artistry of removing  garments
while balancing on the platforms she commands with military precision, like a  towering baby
giraffe, all heads must look up to her dizzying height - she's the goddess of the underworld in the
temple of the wayward lonely hearts, jonesing for a lap dance, (I remember how she got the
jagged scar above her left knee) and when the bra flies off Washingtons and Lincolns flutter
down from the balcony like cherry blossom petals in the spring and just like a prize geisha
she looks up and smiles demurely

Nicole Farmer is a writer and teacher living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in over forty magazines including The Closed Eye Open, Poetry South, The Amistad, Quillkeepers Press, Haunted Waters Press, Wild Roof Journal, Bacopa Literary Review Review, and Kakalak. Nicole was awarded the First Prize in Prose Poetry from the Bacopa Literary Review in 2020. Her chapbook, 'Wet Underbelly Wind' will be published in December 2022 by Finishing Line Press. Way back in the 90's she graduated from The Juilliard School of Drama.