A Strip Club in Virginia

On Parallel Lives and Parallel Poems

Dear sexy people,

There is a story to this poem. It begins roughly two decades before I started writing it, traverses two entangled love affairs, constellates parallel lives, and ends with a new twist on the old Aristotelian mimesis debate—moving into the social and spiritual plane of divination to consider how sometimes, unbeknownst to us, poems prophesize the future.

I started drafting a short essay on when poems predict life, and I would like to share it with y’all next Friday in lieu of another poem, if that sounds fun? Please let me know if you like this idea!

While I’m saving the backstory to “A Strip Club in Virginia” for another day, I will preface my poem with an important acknowledgment that it is based on Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” (1955), which I recommend reading first. You can check out the original poem and my homage to it below.

Happy summer solstice!

xx,

Alison

P.S. If you have time and inclination, please also check out a previously published poem I posted today here. And if you would like to read my unpublished work, please consider a paid subscription or message me for free access!

Last but not least, thank you so very much for the warm reception of my first post, “Death of a Gentleman.”