Janlori Goldmans
The Atlantic Beach Club, 1982
In memory of Alfonse D’Amato
I wait tables in the bar, no windows in that spot
along the ocean, no wives either, just women
on the side and young ass serving drinks. Leaning over
to replace an empty scotch with a fresh one,
the senator smacks my behind, tucks two twenties
into my pants. His sapphire pinky ring waves me
<away— he trusts I won’t talk, that the platinum beehive
he twiddles next to him is invisible. When he snaps
his fingers for another round, he believes this barmaid
is Sicilian, like the other summer girls.
I knew how to stay chummy with silence before closing
my palm around a diamond earring under his table,
nearly sucked into 2am’s vacuum, flicked out with a swizzle stick—
a secret sparkle I wrapped in a lipsticked napkin.
Janlori Goldman is the author of Bread from a Stranger’s Oven (White Pine Press, 2017), chosen by Laure-Anne Bosselaar for the 2016 White Pine Press Poetry Prize; and Akhmatova’s Egg (Toadlily Press, 2013). Her work has appeared in The Cortland Review, Mead, Gwarlingo, Connotation Press, Calyx, Gertrude, Mudlark, The Sow’s Ear, Rattle, Contrary, and other journals.
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