Chard deNiord (Putney, Vermont, USA): "Club Erebus"

Death is the Mother of Beauty.
Wallace Stevens

They emerged from a door that wasn't a door
and floated across the room to the stage
which they ascended and began to sway
and bend and turn with only their g-strings on.
I sat at the bar drinking gin and smoking
a cigar, watching them work beneath
the lights, accept the funds of happy men
who took great care in folding their bills
like miniature towels inside their belts
around their thighs that went k'ching,
k'ching, until a ring of bills adorned
their thighs and the music stopped
for a moment, long enough for them
to disappear into the dark of the high
stone door at the end of the stage
where they waved goodbye, goodbye,
and then were gone beneath the world
like the ghosts they were, to rest for a while,
the longest time, before returning live
to die again as they had before.

© Chard deNiord 2007