Vera (This Is Cabaret)

Her garter straps her to the audience.
She stretches her black lace over her legs,
and applies the blush quite butch.
To put the kindling on the fire,
she’s a redhead (an awful cactus to the management.)

Her mouth tugs at that cigarette
like it’s a pacifier (though in futility).
For this is cabaret and her nerves are like an afro.

Her heels suffocate her feet,
but the primping is killed; the curtain is spread,
and the spotlight is interrupting her vision.
Her mother said her destiny was to marry a stockbroker.
Her father wanted her to enroll in typing class.
But this is Vera.

Oklahoma Buck

The oblivion posed behind Buck
when he combed his hair with chain link
and mated his teeth with a toothpick.

Things were simpler then in Oklahoma,
and when he stood on his Mama’s porch
his radar was on for spring chickens.

Buck never took old bloodhounds as trespassers –
only people warranted the bullet,
or tumbleweeds crossing his path.

Elaine Benes

Puddy is in and out of the picture
and Miss Little Kicks paints her nails Toxic Waste Green.
She’s an accomplice to a kidnapped dog
and is “running out of guys” in the New York scene.

She’s allegedly “difficult” with doctors
and spreads her rash like wildfire.
She’s a reluctant attendee to Festivus,
and her Atomic Sub card is her gun for hire.

Helping Costanza slip his boss a Mickey
is beyond the realm of normal,
but she is not before a trial
because her curls deem her adorable.

There are things to her distaste: a wig, a fur.
Basically, she throws them out the window.
Georgie summed her up as a “Rock Star”;
a kind of dark spirit without the widow.

Amanda Tumminaro lives in the U.S. She is a poet and short story writer and her work has been featured in Thrice Fiction, The Radvocate and Stickman Review,among others.