Carl Sandburg

Soiled Dove

LET us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she
    married a corporation lawyer who picked her from
    a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody’s money and paid
    for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing
    and dancing.
She loved one man and he loved six women and the
    game was changing her looks, calling for more and
    more massage money and high coin for the beauty
    doctors.
Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself,
    reads in the day’s papers what her husband is
    doing to the inter-state commerce commission, requires
    a larger corsage from year to year, and wonders
    sometimes how one man is coming along with
    six women.
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