She texts from the leather bar,

“flagging encouraged:

hookers flag green”

my favorite color since age fourteen

(felt frogs, mermaid scales

peacock chests, emeralds)

 

like an old banker lamp

like an old banker’s money

the type of trick who’d say

“I want to know what you taste like”

 

how working girls 

shimmered green in the dark

after swirling radium paint brushes

on the tips of their tongues

and before dying

(I want to know what radium tastes like)

 

a garden party on a lawn

with sprigs of sage

in each cocktail

and ferns tangled in trellises,

the color of jealousy

and vines crawling up Spanish tile

 

I once used a lime green tennis ball

to gag a man

unfortunately he lived

his fortune rustled like leaves

in my back pocket

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