Red Whorehouse Sofa

Abstract

Red Whorehouse Sofa Lyrae N. Van Clief-Stefanon (bio) Cave Canem: A Special Section If I stuck my tongue into these old grooves, the furrowed wood of the red whorehouse sofa, I might find a splinter and fill my mouth with the taste of blood and old dust. It curves scoliotic, sags like a shoulder. I follow its lines, a lumpy terrain, the almost rust-grained nap of velvet. It hides rips held together with safety pins like the worn gown of an old woman who refuses mirrors, whose seam split, a slit run too high revealing pale, varicose thigh. It keeps the smells of marrow, the memory of fire, and dead wood. I could strip it, find it animal, a skeletal patchwork of horse-hair stuffed boards, its black iron lion’s paw feet screwed deep into its splayed legs. In my lust for texture I am afraid to leave its broken lap. It offers a layered history of lives I slip into like shadow, familiar as family. I have built my living room around the beauty of its battered curves, the creak of its belly when I twist or turn, its bawdy sinking, the thought of recovering it. Lyrae N. Van Clief-Stefanon Lyrae N. Van Clief-Stefanon is studying for the MFA degree in poetry at Pennsylvania State University. When she was an undergraduate student at Washington & Lee University, she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Copyright © 2000 Charles H. Rowell