Card Game Poem by Laurence Overmire

Do me a favor and have the guts
To show your face
Lay your heart upon the table
Not hidden up your sleeve
Waiting for the chance to
Cheat
The hands you’ve not been dealt.

The fan that blocks the beating of your lashes
The made-up beauty of your seemly look
Is but a temporary obstruction
The dissembling of a mean intention
Is not so easy to mistake.

In the backrooms of your mind
An upstairs bed awaiting
The dash of the stranger
Boots to the floor
May succumb to the whim of indifference.

But the holster laid upon the nightstand
Carries the bullets of love’s lost cause.


(Previously published in The Underbeat Journal, July 2003)