Jeanette Applebelle & Ray “shutterbug” Luvah, erstwhile highschool
sweethearts, meet at the Stop n Grill, thirty years later.

There's no one else in the diner, fortunately.
Just the slow drip of bad coffee, pies beneath their plastic domes
like women in lost beauty parlours.
Everything drying out.
What if I see you again, I said to myself when you looked me up, and
all of it rushes back, the whole shebang of dances, track meets,
holding hands on the porch at sunset.
Then I will have to leave my life.
I knew I was taking that risk.
So it's a relief (no offence, dear Ray), that time has made me wise to
what can't be replayed, the impossibility of return.
And I see it in your eyes too as you stare at me,
as if I've become a sign weathered of all but its last few letters,
incomprehensible leftovers, faded from too much rain.
I understand.
Really.
So, how were your fries?
[Silence] [Silence] [Silence]
Cheque please!

The Deflections of Mr Luvah

1.
You won't know what to do with this.
But Ray always does.

2.
They look (he said) like mandibles, pendants,
like two paths diverging in a wood, like fetters,
forelocks, Monroe's legs sticking out from under
her final sheet.
For Ray can often be found leaping.

3.
Ray had once regarded Jeanette with some intent.
It is best not to know with what kind.

4.
Perhaps there were eggs on Ray's platter.
But how can we be certain with the tines
hidden, the blade?

5.
A man & a woman are one. A man & a woman & a napkin
are one. That's funny, thinks Ray.

Ms. Applebelle's Four Strategies for Shadows

You told me you love beauty
but that's only because you hate it.
All that time, leafing through the morning paper:
news, then the funnies, finally the obits,
you never thought once to glance
behind you.
If your eye offends you, pluck it out.
Isn't that what the Bible says?
*
Ray, I brought you a gift but now
I don't know where to put it.
This way, it seems too naked
and in the real & artificial lights
of the café I can't tell anymore
whether it's your shadow that leaks
across the floor, the countertops
or the blood of what I placed
so heavily down.
It is there if you turn, Ray,
silver as a bell but soundless.

*
If something eyeless watches you,
have you been caught?
*
To each his own you would tell me,
ever the liberal, unruffled,
abstracted
and so what I've chosen to give you
is really just a mirror of myself
as are the spiders, the quicksand,
the airline crashes in dreams.
Perhaps you too are a symbol
and thus my offering remains
invisible, shining like the cipher
it is as you take up your coat at the end,
place three bright coins for coffee
in the girl's waiting, outstretched hand.