Poem Inspired by Degas’s L’Absinthe
At the Nouvelle Athènes
on Place Pigalle
in the 9th arrondissement
of Paris, Ellen and Marcellin
show love for the Green Fairy,
who, in return, leaves them blue.
Autobiography of the Gimp
Everyone, they say, has a story. The weird guest at the party. The neighbor who lives alone and never leaves the house. The old baritone who sings opera on the street.
In Tarantino’s L.A. of hit men and fixers, I’m the one you want some dirt on. Was I beaten as a child? Did I run away from home? Does my crotch stink from the bondage suit?
My story begins the second you see me yanked out of the box. “Bring out the Gimp” is just another way of saying “It’s a boy!” The leather leash is my umbilical cord.
But if you hang me upside down and slap my bottom, I won’t cry like a newborn. I’ll giggle like a half-wit.
Think of me as an abscess on a squeal-like- a-pig Georgia mountain man’s sweaty face. I make what’s ugly uglier.
Joel Allegretti is the author of, most recently, Platypus (NYQ Books, 2017), a collection of poems, prose, and performance texts, and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing, 2016), a novella. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). The Boston Globe called Rabbit Ears “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.”