Venus de Milo with Drawers Takes to the Pole for the Last Time

By Caroline Parkman Barr

 You should’ve seen me—my smooth white hips,
the way they slung cold around powder-slick metal,

             the way I whispered Hey there honey, you look
so sad in the ears of men waxed with whiskey

             and a taste for mink and plaster. How they loved
to pull and tug, open me at my waist and slide in

             five dollar bills—a ten, if I was lucky, and I was
any night I danced to Peggy Lee, wore violet,

             painted my lips black, and shook my bleached hair
down slow. Yes, back then I could still a room

             with a flick of the tongue and an arch of the back.
They all wanted their Venus so bad, baby, so bad.

             But now, my hinges rattle, my skin more cream-cracked,
and just last week a man dropped a quarter into my knee,

             didn’t even want to touch my breasts. So tonight,
as the pink and gold lights slice across the stage,

             I’ll slip off my red rhinestone heels and sink into the splits
one more time—but slowly, slower than they want,

             so I can look them all in the eye to say, You’ll miss me
They say, You look so sad.

—

About Caroline Parkman Barr

Barr is a recent graduate of the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as Poetry Editor of The Greensboro Review. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, RHINO, South Carolina Review, NELLE, Connotation Press, and elsewhere. She is currently an editorial assistant for Poetry Northwest living in Birmingham, Alabama.