HIDING OUT AT MOE’S by David Spicer

I’m sucking on a Mango
Tango in this Phuket bar,
stroking my pet parakeet.
In my crepe shirt and Spanish
boots, I’m a randy outlaw who
belongs in a whorehouse
on Desolation Street, for thighs
knock me off my feet,
especially those I dub Babe,
and I’m hoping I surrender
to vulvas that ululate.
In the orchidaceous room five yards
away, a bored belly dancer shambles
with the trombone player in his
turquoise zoot suit, and she whelms
me with shimmies. I know she wants
my bread, and I’d amble out of here
like a babadook into his flivver,
but the trombonist’s horn is too erumpent.
He’s a throwback, a smokescreen
in moribund tobacco. Soon the demimonde
will diddybop in here with nosegays
of tiger lilies they’ll present to Poopsie—
that’s the belly shaker, not the trombonist.
I’d love to wheedle to the john and dream
when the storm shepherds into town,
so give me a candle, someone in the band
sing The Wabash Cannonball,
and maybe I’ll wait for the Thai midnight
and Poopsie with my pearl-handled buddy
before the skip tracers meander
in here to wish me a Happy New Year.

David Spicer has published poems in The Santa Clara Review, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Remington Review, unbroken, Raw, Third Wednesday, Yellow Mama, The Midnite Lane Boutique, The Bookends Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart once, he is author of one full-length poetry collection, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press). His latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree, (Flutter Press). He lives in Memphis.