Door Girl

1.

You could say Regina was a door 

girl who wasn’t supposed to enter

a house where people fucked, wept,

swung sermons, then collapsed on bony

backs to face a ceiling of sometime stars. 

Or you could say she was a lookout, an only

listener & oh yes, that’s what she did.

One side of her face pressed against

the screen door while Lazee played the 

organ like a church, as though flowers

bloomed around him & sometimes they did.

Purple orchids. White lilies beckoning like fingers. 

2.

Evie was a house girl & she’d sit on the other side

of Regina’s door, singing stories through the organ’s wail, 

for once, she knew everyone: 

Frida, Tina, Leonora Carrington, 

Remedios Varo when she fed the moon,

the punks off Western, the friends who’d kicked

& the friends who hadn’t—who went back home,

or were found too late.

Angeline with her billboard breasts,

businessmen, & pink convertible.

3.

In the afternoons,

when the orchids & lilies shrunk to bulbs

& the flies got tired

of buzzing wings on screen, 

Evie licked her gold tooth

for luck & asked: 

“Regina, are you feeling cold? Because, a girl must

want a roof, even if she sleeps inside the tiniest

Matryoshka—even if she carries a Ziploc bag purse.”