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STROLLING
after Richard Lindner
Her back rumples like El Greco sky,
cloudy edges moonlit indigo, red
piping from the nape down the spine
to the waist and down again
between the buttocks tight
as a mackerel. The backs of her thighs
are gun barrels. A hound tilts
its muzzle up towards a tossed ball
that hangs weightless at the peak
of its trajectory—like a thought,
bright, perfectly formed, just
out of reach. I am stopped
in mid stride, a thief of images,
straight-faced con-man in my new suit
stiff as cardboard. There is a notion
under my hat that I will hide
in a doorway, the shadow blanking
my face like a stocking mask.
I will wait for her to change,
to step out in her little-girl frock,
party slippers, ankle socks.
A notion that she will not see me
as she waits, too, conscious only
of her puppy-white body snug
in white cotton panties and the twin
triangles of her trainer bra.
I will fix my stone-dead eye
on the side of her head and ease
the trigger home. If God has some need
that grey voyeur—for sense to be made,
then I am his man. The whole scene
moves. Billowy cotton, leather, silk—
such stuffs as sense is made on.
I am coming apart. She is blown away.
And the dog's jaws clamp on the ball.
   
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