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Poker

Poker:1


April clouds reduced the dusk
and all things beneath it

to a dimming glow, or headlights.
Yet the swallows still darted

and other lives began or ended
in the heavy, biting incense of spring.

Young lovers ignited their trek
through metal gates and down dirt roads.

And in still, dark houses the living
commenced what they loved to do:

on the way to poker I stopped to buy beer;
she was propped at the pay phone—her legs

so long and her dress so short and open
it weakened my soul just to see it.


Poker:2


Loose-eyed and intent, as the men
played cards I watched their hands.

I saw the wrinkles in their fingers
bunch and flex—until their hands

became something else:  little elegant things
that scuttled across the felt, dragging

chips, stacking chips, fanning hands
like futures and storming bets—I soon

knew these men intimately as hands
played or folded:  their secret lives impaled

like rings riding in abrupt conquest—my face
flushing and read in abeyance to their eyes.

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