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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Dinner at the Hotel de la Tigresse VerteI. Terrace

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

Dinner at the Hotel de la Tigresse VerteI. Terrace

By Donald Evans (1884–1921)
 
(From Two Deaths in the Bronx, 1916)

AS they sat sipping their glasses in the courtyard
Of the Hotel de la Tigresse Verte,
With their silk-swathed ankles softly kissing,
They were certain that they had forever
Imprisoned fickleness in the vodka—        5
They knew they had found the ultimate pulse of love.
 
Story upon story, the dark windows whispered down
To them from above, and over the roof’s edge
Danced a grey moon.
 
The woman pressed her chicken-skin fan against her breast        10
And through her ran trepidant mutinies of desire
With treacheries of emotion. Her voice vapored:
“In which room shall it be tonight, darling”?
His eyes swept the brood facade, the windows,
Tier upon tier, and his lips were regnant:        15
“In every room, my beloved!”