Two Tales of Disempowered Whores
Reclaiming the narrative
Savannah - Edward Swafford
Streaks of Skid Row low-light strawberry hair She's speakeasy and smooth It's what they want, so she gifts them arcadia Never a man she knew, he knows not of nous That tightened tightrope around her trope D-é-c-o-l-l-e-t-a-g-e Curtails breath, covers traced, sere in uneasy Temperament tremens and those sHaKeS? Godless and guilty, so they say, so She craves another hit but bruised veins STRIKE a matched flamingo flame on such A pallor face Trick or trauma, tricks deny troth: "Stop. Talking. Spread. Those. Legs. Wider." And that quickening?! Another pointed, indexed affirmation The frailties and falsities of hard bare men FASTER, FELLATE, FAUSTIAN, FUCKING Devil-shaped comely hips bait and switch Is that why they come? She eyes the crescent behind waxing Waning now, waiting for juxtapositioned wend That gloss, HA, garnished grace Cheapened potential a glitterati glimpse into Southern glamour It never smelt expensive, guised consent lies Constant stop-loss-start shock softens blows Salves the WHIPCORD Savannah, last of her name, now null.
© Edward Swafford 2025Thank you for reading. My piece focuses on a glamazon wilting beneath the bright lights of the big, sacrificial city.
Sex work is real work. Reclaiming the word “whore” for women is respect personified.
By Any Other Name - J. Kayla
On the edge of town,
a woman lives alone in a house
that catches headlights after midnight.
The front door seems respectable enough,
though her late-night visitors go round back.
Her hospitality to men is the town’s unwritten lore,
whispered over rim-stained glasses.
She is pretty in that ordinary way:
just sweet enough to look twice after dusk
just forgettable enough to deny by morning.
Her secrets are the kind
wives swallow with morning coffee,
that daughters glimpse in mothers’ worried eyes.
Find her at the corner bar,
her history preserved in amber,
a slight nod to the bartender who never asks.
Men who know—they line
these wooden confessionals,
bent knees at barstools, waiting their turn.
Her nights blur like the ice cubes,
melting in her whiskey sour.
She swallows it to drown out yesterday
so she can stomach earning her worth tonight.
Her patrons look away from mirrors,
as if they can escape recognition.
John tastes Joe’s cologne in the air,
orders another round,
studies the game no one remembers tomorrow.
Everyone knows—
the bartender’s chin-lift,
how Joe returns with damp collar,
how John suddenly finds somewhere to be,
heads turning then not,
the television suddenly fascinating.
She becomes a secret language,
traded between shift changes,
dealt at weekly poker games,
hidden between “Working late”
and “Crashing at Bud’s.”
She sidesteps whispered judgment
like she dodges questions
about tire tracks still fresh in her gravel.
Such laughable pretense—
though she allows the feigned shock,
their manufactured anger,
as if betrayal weren’t glinting off the rings
they don’t even pull from their fingers.
To her, it’s welcome distraction,
permission for rougher hands,
to feel something sharper than emptiness
but safer than hope,
preferring their performed ownership over none at all.
She pretends their wives are abstract concepts,
swallows tired excuses with warm whiskey.
Her porch light stays broken,
but her back door unlocked,
bedroom light on until dawn.
She avoids Sunday mornings—
honesty like hers would set
the hallowed hall on fire.
Nobody wants to share a pew
with their husband’s sin in Sunday clothes,
see their shame reflected
in her quiet, knowing smile.
Better they pray in peace,
while she sleeps through their confessions.
Their wedding bands leave marks deeper than sermons,
bruises form temporary bracelets on her wrists—
proof she belongs to no one.
As if anyone would claim her.
She is, after all, just a whore— by any other name.
© J. Kayla 2025I wanted to write about how ostracization can snowball from a few bad decisions. A small town bar became a delicious backdrop for that story to play out in my head. Thank you for reading along!
Oh! 'Skid-Row low-light strawberry hair'! So lurid. Reminds me of someone who once wrote 'Beatnik black'.
'Tightened tightrope around her trope'!!! - tautological as befits a literal & metaphorical double bind.
I once knew a British mobster-cum-poet who'd consort with contortionists but victimize them in his poems. He'd aver that the trapezoid artist secretly craved willows weeping onto manicured lawns but was just meat spiraling out for the punters. Somehow I wasn't OK with that. I'm well acquainted with body artists of all stripes, and I see them (us) as agentive. Sexually and otherwise. Body as instrument.
Raw power in the shape of showstopping poetry. Beautiful, both of them.
And the readings!! Unbelievable.