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be eating this tarte tatin
than be her
with her Audrey Tatou eyes that might
crinkle into tears or smiles
but don't quite, as she stares
intense, almost wordless
at him
shuffling on his chair, out-gazed,
chain-lighting Gitanes,
forced by embarrassment
into broken sentences
in this encounter on the edge of being
the end or perhaps the start of something –
the station buffet greasy
with hundreds of past
meetings...departures...
that for this woman, who's been here before,
for this man,
reduce to a worn half dozen possible
highs, troughs, bunglings of love,
inescapable scripts of themselves
that surely, though, could be a rewrite this time
as, now, he rests his hand on the table,
as she strokes it lightly, slowly,
as his feet, invisible to her,
say it all.
I really would.
From The French Literary Review No 9 (April 2008)
I hear shots.
It’s the wind, I say.
Then, loud murmurs.
Surely the fountain below my room.
The moon is a bruised fist tonight.
It has obliterated the stars.
I sleepwalk across the tiny island
to you, mi Hombre Sin Miedo,
my stony love.
It’s dark and the padre in the chapel
with his missing arm and chipped toes
is soaked in yellow holy halo.
But you mi amor, my lichen-crusted
beloved, stand against this moon-lit wall,
eyes sewn to the sea. Such sadness
in the curve of your spine, the tilt of your neck.
Does the smell of death still reek
through the crevices of this blood-stained wall?
Do the cries of men in Franco’s blizzard of lead
still echo in the chiseled chambers of these ears?
Here are my eyelashes.
Take them in your lips.
Here is my forehead.
Let it rest on your chin.
Here is my tongue.
Something behind the wall shudders and
shakes
the ancient oak. Leaves flutter and rain.
We kiss like ghosts.
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