INDECENCY

 

             
         His voice trailed off:   words failed him (or he them)).   But then he said:
         – The thing was, when i could see her, i realized the bitch
         Wasn’t the tough bird she liked to make herself out to be –
         (Mia as dog and turkey?    biting and gobbling his soul?)
         – Twenny years older’n me, man, but she looked good…in the end…

                                                       *

        Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait –    i said    – you’re not telling me
        She got under your skin too –   and right away bit my tongue,
        Since i had never told Raimonde i’d ‘known’ his landlady,
        Professional propriety and all that pappycock.
       (After all my gossiping about their relationship,
        I can only say:   Beware your psycloghoist who writes
        Reports and other fiction, and ask for her his nom de plume.)

                                                        *

       – What you mean? –    Raimonde snapped, checking me out in his mirror,
       His pinched heavy-lidded eyes glinting like…a murderer’s.
       I blurted out   – Wait, you didn’t kill my Mia too, eh? –
       Raimonde turned around in his driver’s seat to glare at me:
       – Your Mia? – he snarled   – Too?  What the fuck!  

                                                        *

       He sighed loudly, then turned his head and stared out his windshield.
       A small girl, bouncing a huge green plastic exercise-ball
       Almost as high as herself, passed on the sidewalk near us.
       The hollow strangely metallic-sounding smack of the ball
       On the concrete seemed a mocking apt rhyme to Raimonde’s words.
       The girl peeped into the car, hugged her ball and ran away.

         (from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)