Time These Wars... (by JKD after Lisa P)

After Lisa P's The Poker Wars of the South...

Time these wars: two at the South bar, ban the West Coast, no one is as insignificant as a port city post-hurricane, or this oil-less desert, sand and more blanks buried deep underneath. Perhaps my bones, or…

And then, she sidles in, slides up next to me on a stool just a little too tall so her toes are dangling like a neck on the line as she says, “When will I begin my real noir?”

Whose is this story? Tall tale of the blank slate, the scratched over. Reset.

She/I/you are not only on the outside, with that easily-forgettable face, place, race for the next ravine, or office. I cast a die, then leave a wish. In the after of the aftermath, solitude returns to remind us work has only a couple of pennies, the watchlist lives in a laundry hotel, and trotting out our pasts, ancient archived maps, is only her will to search for every day’s melting trough over the robot architecture caught up rebuilding.

Hold the images higher, into their solarization. This is just a still, a b&w pic of this other era. A net.

He snapped off her hands, her feet like no other woman. That is how much he wanted her to stay his “special lady”.

What of this article just does not fit?

I left, I came back because of your talent (no husband, no kids, no dust storm to remind me). Neither high as a citadel of poker playing. She was typing “Do not care” on the post-its one by one. I began fixing them to surfaces where they refused to stick. The rooms fall landscapes of leaflike squares “not” “care” do”. A bold determination to give up.

But then, she got that call again. The revervist’s reservist. A doily in a red doll dress, clown lipstick. This is crimson if ever such orange scuttled their plans. I nodded. We both knew that I/you/she could be a true professional, in a sharp-creased uniform, if only the night would give us a chance to rectify our futures. Return her limbs. Her joints. My eyes.

Dates are behind us now. I give her a jab, to check, then wave at the window where what once most famous takes a job. Her feet dangle and that last word, “noir” flutters out a crack in the glass between us.