You Don’t Have a Corvette in Your Garage

I.
Dorothy Parker tells everyone
at the Algonquin 
that she’s not like the other girls:
You can lead a whore to culture,
but you can’t make her think.
Robert Benchley laughs.

II.
Annie’s twelve years old
in two more she’ll be a whore
nobody ever told her it’s the wrong way,
Bradley Nowell sings over surf-ska guitar.
Poor Annie. He fucks her anyway.

III.
What’s the difference between a dead hooker and a Corvette?

IV.
Did you hear the one about the john
who strangled a call-girl with a pair
of her own stockings? Then he texted,
should have picked a different career, honey
That one really happened. His name
was Matthew. I don’t know hers.

Joan Rivers’ Face

She was born
Joan Alexandra Molinsky,
and her mother asked the doctor,
Will she live?
and the doctor said
Only if you take your foot off her throat.

What a good sport, flat
as a matchstick, Joan wore angora sweaters
Just so the guys would have something to pet.

Nose job in college, eye lift in Hollywood
peach lipstick, red carpet,
rasping on stage for her gays
like a golden doll.

Joan pours a pink packet
of Sweet’N Low into her black coffee
as the boys across the booth
order towers of pastrami.

Meanwhile those busty shiksa starlets
just keep getting younger.
Someone cut these ingenues
down to size. Under their satin gowns
even their virgin flesh gleams.

Joan Rivers’ face
is like the AIDS Quilt,
stitched up so many times,
and still sad.

Joan makes an urgent call to the doctor.
She covers all the mirrors.