MY BABY'S SO UGLY

We didn’t want fine service,
candle lit tables,
the murmur of literate talk
about politics or sex building
like steam against the windows.
No, after a shift,
the waitresses from the country club
yearned for dives--places like
Bud’s Country Lounge where
you waited half an hour for a beer
while the wall-eyed bartender
chatted up a girl with a flamboyant chest
straining against hers tube top--her heart,
red and mysterious as a pomegranate,
thumping brilliantly behind it.
We lived for nights like the one
when a drunken lead singer
wearing a jock strap on his head
sang “My Baby’s so Ugly”
with such irresistible heat
that sixty-five year old Lucy
climbed onto a table and peeled off
vest, tie, tuxedo shirt.
Then, gyrating so recklessly
we were sure the table would give way,
she flung them to the crowd
shedding both time and torpor
in one defiant rhumba.