Gail Fischer
Gail Fischer
HIS AND HERS HECHT
Lovemaking we deferred for hours
Still locked in an embrace, but vexed;
No supple soporific——ours
A robust explication de texte.
You read and re-read “The Transparent Man,”
An invalid’s rattling after opaque death——
For you the battling of Flaubert’s St. Julian,
Almost an epilogue to bated breath.
“Please don’t be angry!” I repeated——
“But her diction’s lacking authenticity.”
“I’m not angry, I’m just heated” you
Insisted——“She finds redemption in the trees!”
Your vast immortal globe of thought above
Abandoned, you returned, and we made love.
G. A. Fischer
THE SECRETS WEDDING
After "A Wedding" by Mac Hammond
Given in paradox—man longs to be a woman's first
(that long impossible); a woman wants, she yearns, she works
to be her lover's last—the chupah was a chutzpah and
a miracle. (Anyway, these two would never take a vow.)
No voile veil cascades, the bride's draped borrowed satin
vintage over fresh Lou Frenchlace underwear. She carries
jaundicing gardenias, handling an olfactory fireworks
of flowers. (The hall was free, the food home-cooked.)
The cautious groom's in street clothes brooking no
annoyance, sports no small abutting boutonniere.
She notices him thinking, I don't want more
misery; he knows she's feeling, I don't
want to lose him, anymore. Come to disdain passe
symbolic acts, their guests are gossiping, dub all the couple's
lurid years of confidence.
At home under indecipherable
stars, after his first or her last duplicitous 'good night' every
time they kiss and kiss not quite this aptly ever before.
G. A. Fischer
1990 and 1996
Sammy Snow, Gail, and Irving in North Truro, Cape Cod, July 2000
(John Snow)