Two Golden Tickets sonnets (my Charlie and The Chocolate Factory homage book of poems) from the Hot Chocolate section which involves chocolatier love triangles, femme fatale industrial spies, strip clubs and licorice .

Sugar Daddy’s

A strip club in which Arthur Slugworth, chocolatier competitor of Willy Wonka, meets the woman who will become his secretary and industrial spy and future lover of Willy Wonka.

American Candy Expo meets in
Chicago each year. Arthur Slugworth’s jet
consistently appears before show begins
day early to play. Bittersweet secrets
over his butterscotch schnapps confessed
to the ponytailed stripper; her peach ring
pop, bubblegum thong, sweet visage suggests
she is a shell you could tell anything
but cotton candy brains can cling — also
the voice recorder in bow in her hair.
It isn’t nice. It isn’t fair. She knows
your preferred sweet competitors prepare
the Sugar Daddy, like name of this place.
Give her a job or she shares your disgrace.


Art by Amy Suzanne

Love In A Great Glass Elevator

The recurring sex dream of Slugworth’s
spy who seduced Willy Wonka

When glass doors close, I am no longer spy. Dance
nude, translucent box, candy man between
taut thighs. Full force of rocket propellants amplifying thrusts of him, prim petite
chocolatier with an everlasting
lust. Pixie dust, from fingertip’s brush
of button, showers us, his stick swirling
deeper within until a scrumptious rush,
endorphins splay sticky limbs. We care not where
we do descend. Paroxysms push buttons
neither comprehends until we are there
and the gravitational bounce summons
moans, now echoed doubts ten thousand feet deep
in rock candy mines I visit asleep.

The Annotation of HOT CHOCOLATE!

Hot Chocolate! is a sexy section at the end of my chapbook Golden Ticket, a book of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory homage poems. The book began with a Milk Chocolate section (sweeter, more innocent poems) and a Dark Chocolate Section (more adult themes).

The Hot Chocolate section came later though the poem that inspired the beginning of its lust triangle and espionage tale, “The Sweet Seduction of Willy Wonka” was one of the first poems I wrote. That poem is being published soon in Otoliths and tells the story of how Slugworth sends a sexy female spy into Wonka’s factory to steal ideas. She seduces Wonka which is references to in the sonnet.  Originally I thought this might just be a one-off but as is the custom with many of my books, this one poem started a small world of its own — not an entire book like Flutter became from one poem, but the section of Golden Ticket called “Hot Chocolate!”.

I enjoyed developing this sex and candy story inside my dark fairytale poetry collection.   The second sonnet I shared with you above “Love In A Great Glass Elevator” illustrates the magical physicality of the relationship between Willy Wonka and the industrial spy.   In the elevator and the rock candy mine deep in the factory, for those moments, the spy forgets her duplicitous purpose, and she is just a body experiencing the kind of pleasure one holds onto for decades and revisits.  In fact, the poem itself is written from her perspective much later where she is remembering these encounters in detailed delight — if also a little bittersweet regret for the context of their relationship which prohibited more intimacy.

The first poem Sugar Daddy’s gives us a bit of history of the spy before she ever met Wonka.  We learn she was a topless dancer (a profession I did for five years so it works its way into a lot of my work) in a club called Sugar Daddy’s that is homed in Chicago where the American Candy Expo meets each year.  Arthur Slugworth, who we learn in the book is one of two unscrupulous competitors of Willy Wonka, attends this conference annually.  He has another ritual in Chicago that coordinates with this conference, too — he always arrives early to spend a day at Sugar Daddy’s, the topless club, named after his own favorite candy, The Sugar Daddy — a candy he does not make.

On the visit to Sugar Daddy’s this sonnet encapsulates, Slugworth meets his future secretary/industrial spy now a topless dancer with whom he drinks butterscotch schnapps confesses tipsy secrets.  He confesses to her the reason he choses this club because of his obsession with this candy that he a candymaker does not make.  He feels very naughty saying it but feels safe with the unintimidating, half-naked, simple-seeming ponytailed stripper.  What he doesn’t realize is that the large bow in her hair she wears is a recording device she has used regularly to extort her clients who tell incriminating secrets.

With Slugworth, the stripper has big plans.  She knows she has the makings of a fine commercial for Nabisco, his competitor, speaking, in his own voice, that he prefers their candy to his.  When she lets him know her intentions, he is both shocked and ready to pay to prevent this.  From Slugworth, a CEO of a huge company, she wants a job.  It is the beginning of a dangerous liaison which involve corporate theft, intrigue and an introduction to Willy Wonka, under false pretenses, and a deep betrayal but also some sex she will never forget.

Is it the kind of sex that eventually can change a bad girl to good?

For that answer, you must wait and read Golden Ticket in August.  It’s a perfect womanchild — or manchild, nonbinarychild book, too, if I do say so myself because it begins with very comforting, soothing poetry (and the most magical illustrations by Amy Suzanne).  An example of a Milk Chocolate poem is the title poem of this book, just published recently in Punk Noir Magazine called Golden Ticket   These poems are perfect for the when world feels too dark and you crave comfort.  As you progress through the pages into the Dark and Hot sections, the book gets very adult with social critique, horror and sexuality. I’m complex, and I like to write things, when I can, that speak to both sides of myself.  I’m so excited to share this with you very soon.

Follow me on Twitter @lolaandjolie and my website to learn more about Golden Ticket.