Daily Lunch Specials at Sin City Cabaret

Seen on a billboard just outside Manhattan

I ride the train into the city’s Monday
Madness, the live show during my short lunch
break from the office. The hour is special.
Loving it feels like an eighth deadly sin.
O, towers topless in the sun. My city,
my come-hither gentleman’s cabaret.

The city is a strip of cabaret.
(O, how I love my Two-for-One Tuesday!)
Girls strolling arm-in-arm throughout the city
are sizzling lesbian acts. My hotdog lunch
eaten, I hear Miss Vermont, Wisconsin,
North Carolina, and the special

Miss Oregon request the special
In Flag and Lamb. Bargirl Jane, brown beret
on carrot hair, and uglier than sin,
wears mascara and Wonderbra on Wednesday
Wet ‘N’ Wild when I take my liquid lunch.
Everything looks so fine in Champagne City.

Everyone looks so foreign in the city.
Cleo, Karisma and Love speak special
tongues as I wander past their talk, and lunch
on crystal buns. A diverse cabaret.
The Chinatown shops on Exotic Thursday
are friction booths where you can buy your sin.

Walking in Central Park, around the basin
of reservoir, I wash away the city.
The wind fingers my hair on Fantasy Friday.
To spy the red-tailed hawks, a special
peepshow, my hand whips out my cabaret
glasses. The father feeds his babies lunch.

But on weekends, the suburban penance: lunch
with my sullen kids, sex with my more-sinned-
against-than-sinning wife (it’s no cabaret),
house mortgage, phone, plumbing, electricity
bills, church attendance, TV special,
weddings and funerals. O for the weekday,

for lonely lunches in my slinky city,
where sin excites like something special,
lap-dancing cabaret. Bring me off, Monday!