The world is full of women
　　who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
　　if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
　　Get some self-respect
　　and a day job.
　　Right. And minimum wage,
　　and varicose veins, just standing
　　in one place for eight hours
　　behind a glass counter
　　bundled up to the neck, instead of
　　naked as a meat sandwich.
　　Selling gloves, or something.
　　Instead of what I do sell.
　　You have to have talent
　　to peddle a thing so nebulous
　　and without material form.
　　Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
　　you cut it, but I've a choice
　　of how, and I'll take the money.
　　
　　I do give value.
　　Like preachers, I sell vision,
　　like perfume ads, desire
　　or its facsimile. Like jokes
　　or war, it's all in the timing.
　　I sell men back their worse suspicions:
　　that everything's for sale,
　　and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
　　a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
　　when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
　　are still connected.
　　Such hatred leaps in them,
　　my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
　　hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
　　and upturned eyes, imploring
　　but ready to snap at my ankles,
　　I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
　　to step on ants. I keep the beat,
　　and dance for them because
　　they can't. The music smells like foxes,
　　crisp as heated metal
　　searing the nostrils
　　or humid as August, hazy and languorous
　　as a looted city the day after,
　　when all the rape's been done
　　already, and the killing,
　　and the survivors wander around
　　looking for garbage
　　to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
　　Speaking of which, it's the smiling
　　tires me out the most.
　　This, and the pretence
　　that I can't hear them.
　　And I can't, because I'm after all
　　a foreigner to them.
　　The speech here is all warty gutturals,
　　obvious as a slab of ham,
　　but I come from the province of the gods
　　where meanings are lilting and oblique.
　　I don't let on to everyone,
　　but lean close, and I'll whisper:
　　My mother was raped by a holy swan.
　　You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
　　That's what we tell all the husbands.
　　There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.
　　
　　Not that anyone here
　　but you would understand.
　　The rest of them would like to watch me
　　and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
　　as in a clock factory or abattoir.
　　Crush out the mystery.
　　Wall me up alive
　　in my own body.
　　They'd like to see through me,
　　but nothing is more opaque
　　than absolute transparency.
　　Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
　　Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
　　I hover six inches in the air
　　in my blazing swan-egg of light.
　　You think I'm not a goddess?
　　Try me.
　　This is a torch song.
　　Touch me and you'll burn.