THE SEX WORKER:AJ RAO

Insane, frayed, made-up
Looking into vacant space
Evening slowly eaten up
Sound of water dully falling
Eyelids fluttering weakly
Three meaningless furrows
On the leathery brow
Leechlike doubts cling
I really do not care, really.
Of course, the body pretends.
His loathsome, filthy touch
Feels like black stinging
Obnoxious, crawling caterpillars
Why must I go through this
The tobacco-smell nauseates
Another of those polyester shirts
In dyed hair of black-brown patches
Like broken pieces of my sanity
This polyester shirt in dirty collar
Eats like a vulgar octopus with
Protoplasmic protuberances
With a raucous laughter
And a rancid onion-smell.

I had my colored dreams
Which smelt so good
You know in these evenings
I take out my dreams
Like fine-smelling old clothes
At the bottom of my steel trunk
It feels so good to smell them
And then put them back
I put them back in a hurry
For fear of losing their fragrance.

I have seen it happening
And have stopped caring
The worms of his fingers
Are crawling upon my belly
I close my tired drooping eyes
In pretended half-rapture
I have even enacted so perfectly
The sounds of the explosion
In the inner spaces of my body

A thick dark smoke rises
From my body and spreads
To the vaulting dome of the sky

Obfuscating the orange sun
Then I climb to the terrace to hear
The crickets take over the night.