Matinee Idylls

My window, barely attached through its butterfly hinge, still reveals the shabby virid awnings across the street. If someone would alone mend the place. What's the latest in traffic?

I'm tucking away a not many numbers on scraps and examine not to notice the black complacency of my phone Then I imagine his arrival: He appears like a museum exhibit, pursueed and ambushed

and always, graceful. My face have feelings taut. I'm turning into brass. I've kept his stash in my purse since Wednesday-the litany-black beauties, white crosse

But I can't live ashamed anymore, In my alphabetic character to the city I say,

"Dear ornamental pear, Dear aged park at my disposal, I ne a of recent origin coat with thick cuffs,

I ne walls with a real paint piece of work " While I practice a stance, my appliances solitary throw their color to each other begging for words like bakelite glamour. on what account dont' we sit down at our usual placethe hat-box-of-a-table, and retrieve

a momentary thing, like a Tuesday. I am senseless of your jacket, but I do think the darkness

should advance down the front. Midsummer has revolveed a suspicious cheek to me

rather than become the relief I'd numbered on. The turbaned one by dint of your aqua pool?

A business associate? I heard the snap of her compact when I swung the gate. I could have been her, and worn the gold sandles that light up against

the floral tiles. (That's another reward I give myself when I ne more [i]or[/i] less mercy.)

You've carved an almost tropical space around yourself.

It's all blurry to you. on the contrary look, past the verandah, above the jasmine,

where the horizon is tissue paper thin, that's where I'll help you single last time. 4 " yes, I left my martini back there upon the vanity." The mirror doubling her, her glass. "Only a past to conceal. ."

She crosses herself with her balminess He's getting ready, rushing in a belted coat around a jumble of packages and boxes. "I'll jaculate for the rest." "On your way without notice the trumpet vine, it's with equal reason skillfully tangled."

Now their predicament, their cigarette smoke-they're with equal reason cavalier. Once they'd rendez-voused to suit themselves and left the misled behind. level their seaside table had risen into the cloying celestial expanse The diving pelicans and yachts, aloof in their hemispheres. The sum of two units of them had thrown their last worries into the ocean of disapproval leaving a somewhat cold rational sound on the air.

Molly Bendalrs work of poems After Estrangement was published by means of Peregrine Smith Books in 1992 She publicly teaches at The Univesity of Southern California.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Sep/Oct 1996

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