The First Time I Saw a Hooker

She was not what you would call pretty—
spinning, dangling, 
                                        showing off her cherry-

apple clutch and matching lips.   
                                                                 Her heeled

feet pointed to every flaw and revealed
each crease in the over-tread sidewalk.

Even young boys would stop to gawk
through minivan windows. 
                                                        My own mother

couldn’t help but look and told me her
body was for sale, and images
of Frankenstein buying limbs for his
monster defined whoredom for me for years.

She stood beneath the railroad tracks. 
                                                                               The sheer

hose stretching up her legs, completely inept
in the cool autumn air, at least kept
razor burn from bidders’ sight. 
                                                                Shadows

held her eyes like night, like the deep throes
of the event horizon—
                                             where past and present looked

in all directions at all times—
                                                           that sucked

all light dry and left empty
dilated rounds staring back at me.

I will wait alone now for the memory
of a forgotten woman selling an arm, a knee,
a slouching breast, a moan—
                                                           I will wait

by the silent tracks where men look and debate
the shapes in the swirling dust, finding their dreams

in every imprint in the cement and in the rising steam
of a passing train,  
                                     envisioning the teetering whore

searching for what I could not give her.