Poetry

The photos arrived, tucked inside your letter with its paragraphs

of charm as preamble for the main point, dagger-honed,

that stabbed me by surprise. You’d made an effort

to tiptoe around the graves, you said, and not disturb

the dead—as you’d been taught—while Jade and I 

traipsed upon the grassy mounds. We laid our lissome

bodies down, entwined long limbs, and posed while you 

fiddled with the focus on your new Canon and subdued

the stirring in your khaki pants. Lovers, closeted

even from our close friends, we took advantage

of the chance to ham it up, to touch. Like me, she wore 

black: leather gloves, my fedora, and a camisole stark 

against her pale arms and sharp collarbones. She’d brought

fancy silver cutlery and her handgun, which I triple-checked

to assure the chambers were bullet-free before I cocked

my head and pressed my temple to its snubbed nose—

Behind me, a granite family marker slumped, engraved

with my last name, and behind it, Jade draped

her thick cascade of hip-length hair across the tombstone.

That’s perfect, you praised, and sank to one knee 

to take aim. At yet another grave, she straddled me,

pretended to plunge a knife into my jugular vein

as I arched back, feigning agony. Your gat-toothed grin

lurked in the shadow of the lens. The day was sunny,

but you’d misjudged the aperture or shutter speed,

and the photos came out underexposed, in grainy shades

of green and black, our skin a phantom pallor—

a success of a mistake, a complement to the grim

backdrop. As for your after-the-fact admission 

of prim disapproval, you hypocrite, my friend:

the locale was your suggestion, the photo shoot a fantasy 

you bashfully confessed. And while we were game—

game as in happy to indulge, game as in the target of your hunt—

your letter keeps us in your crosshairs a different way.

I note you failed to specify which pictures you blew up 

to mount like trophies for prominent display.