Comic Cuts

(A sharp-edged setting
summed up pronto—
moonlit penthouse,
high-tech, empty.)

Telephone burbles
and sex interrupted:
he answers in silence,
she listens in dread.

A gun from a drawer is
hastily pocketed,
a hurried embrace then
she watches him go.

The next time she sees him
he bleeds on her shoulder
in the back of a limo
on a traffic-free street.

Revenge is a boardroom,
seven suits in a row:
there’s blams and there’s blood
and a reckoning is done.

He looks tired when she greets him,
there’s a cut-out of kiss,
then they walk away happy,
a long shot of bliss.