Hope Coulter

The Lounge 

Sex is a dark red lounge
 with leather barstools
  and a long dark curving bar
   that gleams where so many
    elbows have rubbed, and behind it a mirror
     of course and the convex
      shine of bottles.  Sex is your legs
       wrapping the barstool, your feet in strappy
        high heels on its rungs, the dark red walls,
         the music dark too, brown,
          taking all the barrettes
           out of your hair.  You’ve left all your common
           preoccupations in other places, your car,
          your coat, your big bag of
         papers and gym clothes, and what you bring
        into this bar is bare as your shoulders, naked
       as your tiny purse:  your need
      for all of it, the parquet
     dance floor shimmying with sparks,
    the neon letters backwards in the window,
   the bartender with big forearms who
  leans toward you, says what can I get you, slides you
 what you want.

Fishing for Compliments
(Terry Wright)