How am I supposed to compete
with Nicole, Fully Experienced
who is able to stroke false lashes
onto her eyelids
rather than lose the wily moults
to the back of a chair?
Nicole, with her cream of know-how,
certainly has a drawer of négligée
and suitable apparatus for pranking
Unlike 8 pairs of cotton briefs,
stitched where they give
so as to last another year of wear;
The only bedside apparatus
a weatherworn Bukowski (apparently
to some a turn on).
I bet fully practised Nicole
wears fetish heels as thin and long
as the ballpoint used to spike down
my wares.
—
I was on Charing Cross Road recently. Swept up in the usual bustle of traversing a London pavement, I kept mindful of my step and the other walkers as we congested around a buggy that had stalled the flow. A scrap of paper under someone’s heel caught my attention. It was a flyer for the services of Nicole, Fully Experienced.
Nicole’s imagined experience inspired today’s poem.
(I am still not entirely convinced about the title, as women who do work in the adult entertainment industry may find it condescending. ‘Skills’ and ‘Wares’ were other options which I considered.)
—
Twitter: @BeadedQuill
Facebook: BeadedQuill
Books:
In the Ocean: a year of poetry
Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys
Shining in Brightness: Selected Poems, 1999 – 2012
Beaded Quill 