Atar Hadari
Connoisseur
She lines up the mementoes
from ten long years of affairs
the photos on the mantles
the instamatics fading to snow blind
reflections of green faces
now barely more than a squiggle on a lens
in her mind’s eye - that one used tooth paste
that one didn’t - most could use a wash
before they’d at her
but they didn’t - rode and mounted,
broke then fell
like cowboys collapsed across broncos
on pneumatic saddles
but they thought they were the boss -
she mounts the last picture sideways
into the gold mirror frame
now she has covered all trace of her face
with man flesh in pictures on pictures, eight by tens,
glossy prints - some naked - they liked to go on holidays -
some costumed - one did play Santa that Christmas
she broke with tradition and let
one actually talk to her small child -
light falls on the mantle
from dusk’s gold and violet display of past
skin cells filling the aquared pool of sky
with bathwater to be flushed.
She raises up her tower glass, pink with one more bottle
to the covered glass - ‘Here’s to you boys,
you did marvelous - only thing
none of you quite made it to second night.’
Page(s) 11
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- Second Aeon
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