Bar Fly. by Joan McNerney

At Jewel Box Tavern

lights are always dim

so you can’t look closely.



Wearing stiletto heels, she

traipses along followed by

billows of cheap perfume.



Dressed in a second skin of

electric blue velveteen

covered with silver glitz.



She looks for a mark, some

clown who carries thick wads

of cash and a stash of coke.



Tapping the shoulder of

the willing joker with her long

lacquered fingernails.



First she must meet him

in the back alley to pay up

with her pound of flesh.



Showing its age, her face

is coated by pastes, crèmes,

thick rouge, blazing red lipstick.



Her brown eyes encrusted with

liners, mascara and shadow

revealed a certain sadness,



Secreted in the dark and dank

women’s room, she snorts

that magical white powder.



Nothing matters now.

There is no despair

only this embrace of bliss.

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Blueline, and Halcyon Days.  Three Bright Hills Press Anthologies, several Poppy Road Review Journals, and numerous Kind of A Hurricane Press Publications have accepted her work.  Her latest title is Having Lunch with the Sky and she has four Best of the Net nominations.