Ethereal Beauty #79

At ease, convivial,
The sailors slug their suds
All afternoon next table,
Scored gale-cuts runnelling
Cheeks like millennial
Lifelines or ochre rivers.

One down, a couple, pact-tight,
Signal their promise
With a quick, hard kiss,
Brush bare arms, arch into each.
Outside the four-foot circle,
Nothing exists. Gins clink.

Patio packed. Painters
On lunch break breaking wind
And company rules, shouts
At punch lines glad, unspooled.
Another pitcher plopped
In puddled backwash. Ha.

At the bar, two secs relate,
In giddy trade, an office
Trick or squalid tryst.
Hair flips, eyes flick, lip tucks
When suave, blue-suited suitor
Takes the next stool, thighs splayed.

And across, a man alone
Bones up on Fyodor’s
Notes From Underground,
Paragraphs underlined,
Sly smile over black book’s V
As he tilts up and sees

Me cupping my Temple,
Shuffling napkins, blushing,
Trivial, ill-at-ease,
Scoring the mahogany,
Graffiti on a coffin
Slab, etchings exed and vexed.