It is never too late to repent.  
	Charles Dickens from Oliver Twist 
 
We are grateful to this sly crone, chain-smoker, never alone
who fills the table with things she has borrowed at their owner's 
invitation. Her lost boys have no vocation, but they are chained
 
to the leg of her table, trained by the Mistress of the nicked Spoon.
She releases her demons into a bottle of Cabernet sauvignon. 
She doesn't really indulge, just a sip. Her faults are common ones,
 
bread and nicotine.  She has worked hard her entire life, learning
the art of deception. Her husband left her with many lives to feed.
When Cabaret plays at the old Sun & Surf she rattles her bracelets
 
to the tune of $, $, $. She sings us out of the movie door. We are groggy
from the dark play. The bountiful table has everything anyone could desire.
Motel napkins she has stashed, pilfered paper towels.  She implores
 
us to snatch a loaf of bread to be used for stuffing under a sign marked 
"Needy." It is there for the taking, the Acme is closed for the holiday. 
She chuckles. She claims that Donald Trump is just like JFK.
 
Like a drunken pair from the Looking Glass, we have landed
into some strange bee hive.  The hive is buzzing and slick
with excess. Her chain-gang drones murmur abiding devotion. But this
 
is the Jersey Shore and the tide is rising.  Our Governor, as ever,
offers us no prayer.  Besides, we are Jersey and we are savvy. The coolers 
we have brought have been emptied by her guzzlers and revelers.  
 
We clutch the tops of them like surfboards, leave her nest steeped
with tainted honey, make our escape. The bite of feral air as we shake
our heads does us both good. We tenderly nurse a turkey leg, a feast
 
from her leavings, use the coolers as makeshift chairs. We survive her grubby
talents. Surely, her gang of dear boys, giddy with her instructions will summon
us back?  My purse will fill with rain, we have nothing they want now. I add salt, 
 
long for next year. I mourn a bit over losing them—Cuz Fagin never instructed 
how to measure gain versus loss. Still I wonder what they had already, couldn't use 
and no longer wanted. How they were trained to sneak, to sabotage, to squander.
                        

We are grateful to this sly hag, bountiful
in her magic. She has released us and all our spirits
 
back into a flask of gin, into her generous glass. 
We tumble down her rabbit hole, we pass
 
pie-bald mice and blind moles. She tries to sing us
upwards, creaking like an ancient oak.  She ties
 
bows and ribbons on the necks of old ghosts.  
We smell the decay of their nests, her teeth
 
in the dish, the sour mash of Autumn. We swarm
with itch into her cloistered Queen’s hive.
 
The bees are sick with tainted honey, we cower
under her last ministrations;  we dine at a wooden
 
farm-table thick with harvest. We become logy
with turkey. Caliban twines our legs. Our foolish
 
mirrors know no envy, know we were simply born
on a rotten day, harnessed to a crooked star.