You drink milk coffee, smoke cigarillos, read
Thrillers cheaply pasted together,
Yellow pigment sticking like pollen
To your fingertips
Yet finding no grooves in which to burrow,
Your fingerprints burned clean off
(My queen in yellow,
I never could deny you a thing.)
In the open-air summer cinema
Gnats ram brittle bodies
Into jaundiced lamplight glow
(Yellow. Do you even have to ask?)
Giallo all’italiana:
With every big-screen chase scene,
Shining knife reflecting a killer,
Femme fatale screaming in terror
Or ecstasy, you smile
Dreamily as if you’re
Puzzling out the mystery in your mind,
Or perhaps planning out
The minutiae of murder.
I take your smooth-velvet fingers
And place them in my mouth;
Let them capture my cravings,
My cries.
💛🔪
