{ matryoshka }

There is a secret burlesque show inside a hot dog stand inside an unknown hat shop inside a midnight nightclub inside a speakeasy. She said if I came, she would let me eat her nipples. Secret knock: bribe the bouncer: tip the cap: bacon-wrapped with avocados and sour cream. I step inside a red telephone booth, close the folding door. The phone rings, I answer. A trap door springs and I fall onto a tall stool. The room is barely lit. A stuffed bear growls on the wall and his claws are out to be manicured. I order a drink made with blue flame and the bartender tosses the fire back and forth between two steel mixers and her face glows in the light and she pours the fire into a thick glass with jagged ice. Her hair is a gold beehive that shoots to the ceiling. The floor is pillows, the walls are leather. A dock rope with knots descends from somewhere that is dark. She flicks her long pink tongue and hisses. Butterflies swarm the top of her beehive, pluck some pins, and it collapses in long cascading curls. She climbs the rope, whips her hair around and it turns to smoke and wraps itself around my arms and legs and it is time to eat.


~O~