‘These chips will facilitate secluded exchanges with the Poetry Whore of your choosing’
From Poetry:
You will enter a dim room appointed with fireplaces, silk tapestries, velvet banquettes, and damask wall hangings flecked with tiny mirrors and sequins. Every available surface will be either carved hardwood or plated with gold leaf. Because no self-respecting bordello would be caught without a piano player, there will be one, alternating his sets with DJs spinning the greatest hits of the 1890s and early 1900s.
You might order yourself a whiskey drink or some absinthe from the bar, and while you’re standing there, getting your bearings, you will almost certainly be approached by one of the Regulars, perhaps the Card Sharp, who “as a youth growing up in Bombay, India, learned how to use chicanery and card tricks to separate pigeons from their money,” or the Consumptive, who “rather than recuperate in warm and arid climes, has opted to dissipate here in the cold and muggy Middle West, living out his remaining days neither wisely nor well.” These gentlemen will gently persuade you to pay a further $5 per token for poker chips. These chips will facilitate secluded exchanges with the Poetry Whore of your choosing, the idea being that ladies of the night had best not handle cash.
Shortly, the Brothel’s madam, Black-Eyed Susan, a commanding force in a corset and bloomers, will lead the room in a toast, followed by an introduction—including a five-line sample of poetry per poet—of the night’s performers. From that point forward, throughout the evening, strumpets will take the stage to deliver poetry teases in a structured rotation, not unlike dancers at a strip club, giving you a hint of what might be in store should you opt for an individual performance. These readings will be punctuated by actual strippers—burlesque dancers, including Lula Hoop-Garou, whose routines combine hoop dance with circus tricks—as well as by vaudeville acts and musical guests with theremin and accordion skills.
Perhaps you will choose to spend time one-on-one with Pearl du Mal, who “was born a bastard to the barmaid Fleur and grew up in the taverns of Whitechapel,” or with Vivian Nightwood, who “may or may not be the supplanted heir to a textile fortune that was misappropriated by her lecherous half-brother, against whom she may or may not spend her idle hours in alehouses plotting revenge.”
