All I could do while I stood there <br />dazed in the dim bare room <br />was wonder why the price of one <br />was five dollars more than the others. <br />The three sat down and faced me <br />in a line, nearly indistinguishable, <br />legs tucked in at their sides, <br />leaning on the heels of their hands. <br />All were lolling and demure, <br />junior high school cheerleaders <br />on a gym floor of rough boards, <br />trying to look kittenish, cute - <br />but pockmarked, sick-looking, <br />counting out their smiles, <br />and hiding in their pupils, <br />perfect glinting pictures <br />of a blackness that plunged me <br />into a strange sadness, <br />as if I had recognized <br />something I could not remember <br />but was desperate to return to. <br />I asked the man at his bar <br />with the rifle lying beside him <br />if he would sell me a bottle of brandy, <br />the amount of my offer higher <br />than the cost of the expensive girl. <br />I had one drink, and left the bottle, <br />and walked out into the afternoon, <br />the light glassy-red like a candy heart. <br />The rutted road now sifted me, <br />each particle of dirt a skull's eyehole, <br />the pure depth of a gaze <br />robbing me of any direction I knew.<br /><br />Russell Thornton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nogales-prostitutes/
