Film Noir

They had to operate

remove the one

and from the other

take a nugget.

Later in the hall

they said they got it all.

They said how well

she’d be with rest.

Her first night home,

as we prepared for bed,

she turned to show me.

In my mind the cinema of fleet

but fecund years

ran through another time.

Two Appliqués

If the greatest of these

is charity

tell me again

why it’s gauche

if this young man

in a booth at a bar

dives under the skirt

of the farmer’s widow

smiling across from him.

There he will find

what he’s after

and get that big kiss

before driving her home

through jackhammer rain

and flying with her

through the windshield

making a turn.

Now they're a legend

the talk of the town

emblazoned forever

for pickups to see

as two appliqués

on a viaduct wall,

their Rorschachs

bright red,

whatever their ages.

Black Seed by Black Seed

Every day the same people

at the same table

at the rear of the cafeteria.

The maiden, 35 at least,

is gray at the temples, 

sour at the mouth.

The widow, 55, waves

a cigarette like a wand.

Girdled and dyed,

she needs no one now;

She ministers to a dog

and has a new apartment.

The accountant, 65, wants to retire,

his years of intemperance

tempered by a stroke,

his anger at everything

suddenly gone. The janitor, 60,

explains over and over

how over the weekend

he snipped from his garden

husks of dead sunflowers

and drove them out of the city

and into the forest

and there in a clearing

spread the black cakes

for chipmunks to strip,

black seed by black seed.

I, a young editor,

“with your whole life

in front of you,” they insist,

sit through it all,

Monday through Friday,

spooning broth, buttering slices

of rye, and praying that after

pudding again for dessert,

the phone on my desk

will explode too late

with a call I’ll take anyway,

and that after that call, I’ll rise

and take from my sport coat

a speech I wrote years ago,

a speech I’ll discard for two lines

off the cuff: “Here’s two weeks’ notice.

I have found a new job.”