She says, "I love a man who can make
me laugh," then tells him not to be so
childish. She knows the punch lines to his
jokes. The spasmodic patter she hears
is not a smattering of light app-
lause but the sound of his face cracking.
He would rather watch her cleavage than
the curvature of lips, made sticky
with cheap shots. She punctuates each sen-
tence with a glowing stub as red as
Mars in the night sky over tene-
ments. Her words emerge as clouds to fog
the clarity of solstice air, while
he jingles with small change and tangled
keys. At the changing of the seasons,
so the retro force of fashion helps
conceal the fact that black is the new
black. He would wear a red suit and not
shave, if she would dangle on his knee
and pull at whiskers to determine
truth. That would deserve a belly laugh.
