Helen of Troy does Countertop Dancing by Margaret Atwood

Significance of title: Helen of Troy an iconic woman, a symbol of beauty; hers was the face a thousand ships sailed for. She also stands for the unattainable, the out-of-bounds, a woman they (men, or the dancer's clients) cannot have. The poet uses this symbol to shock the readers and to bring out the crassness and total objectification of a beautiful woman such that she has no grace left - she is a piece of meat on a shelf.

Read this: http://themosthappy.me/2014/01/07/margaret-george-and-margaret-atwood-tackle-helen-of-troy/

Quote these:

1. "Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way you cut it, but I've a choice of how, and I'll take the money."
2. "It's the smiling that tires me the most, and the pretense.."
3. "You think I'm not a goddess? Try me."

Line-by-line analysis:
The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
slut-shaming
also the assumption that strippers and bar dancers have no dignity and the view that they are not respectable
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of 
perils of said day job. In this world, to earn as much as men do, she has to do a job that men won't. 
Also mention unequal minimum wage
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
She sells her body, but not as a prostitute - just as a beautiful thing to look at, to lech, to want but never get. 
You have to have talent 
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
She peddles sexual promise, not even sex. She sells dances and her customers purchase fantasies - never fulfilled, only used as bait 
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.
(She agrees that she is exploited for her body. Any way you look at her profession, it is extortion. "I've a choice of how," tells us that women in other professions are exploited, too, and her freedom to earn a livelihood this way is the little liberty she has. And she's paid more.)

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
(sexual want is the facsimile of desire)
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
(even love, even beauty)
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
(not only is love sold, but it can be sold in little portions, at intervals. When men watch her, they see gory crime. They see the belittling of love, desire and attraction, done for them. What is unnerving is that they asked for it and got it, but to get it is wrong, or so they have been taught. When longing is sold, men see that in the face of money, even idealism falls.)
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.

Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads 
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
(they hate her because they hate that they love all that she stands for within themselves. Their hatred for her is just a projection of their own self-contempt)
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge 
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
(she understands their wanting to capture, control, conquer her - her body and her weapon (her beauty))
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
(she describes her work as a countertop dancer with the aftermath of a village raid - the bloody, brutal, inhuman leftovers of loot)
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most. This, and the pretense
that I can't hear them.
(they distance themselves from her. They speak about her, in the third person, as though she weren't there with them, within earshot)
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
(sexual grunts or the voices of contemptuous men)
obvious as a slab of ham,
(she feels like meat when these pigs grunt over her)
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
(she maintains that distance, and with it, some dignity. She has come from above and the vices of men are petty, insignificant, beneath her)
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
Leda, Helen's mother
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. 
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.
(All the cheating, lying men that hope to fulfill their fantasies)

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
(they want to see her as an object, not a person. They cannot bear to continue watching her otherwise.)
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body. 
They'd like to see through me, 
(their desperation to ignore her tells us about how badly they want her and how well aware of  its (their desire and lust for her) being wrong they are)
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
(she is hiding nothing and is therefore transparent. the men can't face the truth of their desires so they block her out)
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
birth of Helen of Troy allusion)
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.