Soiled Dove
Carl Sandburg
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.
