Welcome to My Cabaret

I am that pillow in the couch-corner,
red-faced and ready to lose its tassles.
Those filmy letters from the newspaper
still haunting your green-veined hands—that’s me.
Twenty-four colors of countertop, three-inch squares
strung together on a link chain.
I am in your unconscious
pretty little head. Buy a few
drinks; put a buck or two in the band
of my rabbitless fedora.
A mouse with a Butterfinger
wrapper rustling through the dark,
I am the tricks
up my own unbuttoned sleeve:
a voice,
a one-man show.
Stay awhile, one more cup of coffee,
welcome, I’m your host.

Angie Hogan
“Welcome to My Cabaret” first appeared in Notre Dame Review, Number 27, Winter/Spring 2009.