Russian Baths

The second most beautiful girl is the boldest.
She can duckfoot around the benches, untie the ribbons

of her hips. She is bold; she is silver; she cannot shame us.
The thistle under our arms. The dermal ruts, sulfur between our legs.

Our talk is bright, sparrowish. Kindergarten, that last trip to Mexico.
I’ve never seen sand so white.  We face away from her,

salute the lockers.. Grey steel, wheel of numbers. Not a mirror.
She unhooks her bra. She has all the time in the world.

There are many of us. The air is moist. 
When we exit, we will beat each other, flank to shank,

with birch bound neat. We will breathe eucalyptus,
get a little high on chlorine. Yes, that is nice. You have a body;

it is my body. Acupuncturists say we shore our envy
in the spleen.  We fit as tight as matryoshkas. We slit

our collective eyes like votives strung on the porch
of a late-summer party. We bathe her in distilled & terrible light.

Not an interrogation room. Not a flirt with red curtains.
There are women who come when called, who tell you what you need

without duress or torture. We all have something to sell
the high bidder. Our secrets, our Tupperware, our nasty lingerie.

At summer parties, our sweat is delicate and sweet
under our lace.  We have dresses for dancing, for the egret chirps

of love, for cake. Fold chocolate into butter, frost twenty layers
and feed her. How much time we’ve wasted in another’s life!

We hold her hair back, lovingly.
Lovingly, we clean the plate.

Michelle Chan Brown’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sycamore Review, Prism Review, The Missouri Review, Tampa Review, KNOCK, Gertrude, Broken Bridge Review, The Concher, Yemassee, and textsound. She earned her MFA at the University of Michigan, where she received the Michael R. Gutterman prize. She lives in Pomfret, Connecticut, where she is the Writer-in-Residence at Pomfret School and serves as assistant poetry editor to Drunken Boat.