STEALTHLY, A THROWBACK MOVES FORWARD

She was
a white-gloved
street whore;
Picasso's mistress,
Isadora's partner,
Baudelaire's muse,
a lower east side
gutter hugger
when there was
a lower east side
to fight the chill
inside a world
full of spoons
& white cotton.
Now she fights
off dementia &
boils by forming
words in a darkness
of her own making
& singing to lights
of her own choosing.
She's pulp
in all its
glory.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2017