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Rite of Passage at the Strip Club

Donna M. Davis

Doesn’t matter if you were more innocent
than the buddies who thought it would be fun
to bring you here, the seamiest place in town,
a strip club with strobe lights and black walls.
Yellow lamp shades cover hanging fixtures;
the floor is sticky with beer and indeterminate effluvia.


Rowdy young men hoot and whistle;
some seedy old guy holds a hat over his crotch.
A corpulent girl with a pixie haircut,
they call “the shaker,” gyrates on stage,
talking to herself, saying dirty shit you never heard before.
Eyes glazed, drugged high, her thighs bulge.


She jiggles a breast out of her purple bra,
pulls the green panty up and down for a thrill,
yanks a papier mâché penis between her legs,
and waves a cardboard sign that says: “Why Mom married Daddy.”
She finishes her dance and dresses in a fuzzy fuchsia robe
that resembles a baby blanket.


Your friends tell you she turns tricks on the side.
They feed you cigarettes and Old Milwaukee,
while waiting for the next act to start.
An oily man in a muscle shirt is already buying her a drink.
Her eyes seem dead now.
She loosens her robe and leads him to the back room.

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