Peepshow Kleenex

Do you cry for the men and their peepshow kleenex,
go-cart voyeurs at a wind-up puppet show,

see how the cathouse shutters flip open
and closed like bank teller’s windows, porn station ticket takers,

the booths’ red carpets worn thin from kneeling,
that frozen blink of incredulous children -play it again-

in the viewfinder of dollar bill titties and candystriper
pussy, the hairless condundrum of tawdry women, shorthand

for go fuck yourself, and that same tweezed pleading
of change machines where quarters will buy anything but

the key that lost its door. That one comes every night
with his mother. This one doesn’t care who watches him spread

petroleumed fingers on the plexiglass, desire’s crude
placard, written in the dimestore alphabet of shortchanged

zippers — do you hear how
they cry out in the movie star darkness —

do you hear how they cry out because
it’s all they can afford?