Poker Alice gave me the Ace Tucked up Her Sleeve

she said "at my age
I should be knitting"
with a poker face then
she pulled an ace tucked
up her sleeve and gave it
to me at the leadville poker
room where she refused to play
on Sunday asked if I was gay and
said she'd rather be playing poker
with five or six experts than eat

I'd remembered what
butch cassidy said to
me about revealing if you
were eating rabbit or bear
he said whatever one puts in
one's mouth ain't none of a visiting
preacher's business

alice broke the
bank that day and
on the following week
broke the bank at silver
city puffing on black stogies
all whilst winning the men's money
Working the saloon owned by bob ford
the man that killed jesse james

I sat next
to alice the
men challenging
her to play using
her good looks to
distract the men she
was good at counting
cards and figuring odds "I
figure you are" she said to
me "I'm holding a brothel in
the name of madam and moonlighting
as a bootlegger and butch cassidy said
scuttlebutt was all it was with you and
lula fisk that calamity jane was a different
story"

I looked alice
in the eye with my
poker face "lula fisk
was a mail-order bride
that showed up to my door
with the wrong address but
I didn't tell her I expect
etta place will go down in
history with the joke of the
century" and I pulled alice's
ace out of my sleeve

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, Celebrity firebrand lesbian novelist