You look over to her, sitting a little bit down into the far corner of the bench,
And you can finally draw that gladdening up into yourself.
Ah, yes
You say to her, “You’re really pretty.”
The clutchless reachiness within you, that had been there, is there no more.
You’d spent hours together tonight, this first night, wanting to feel like this,
Hours wanting to feel her pretty.
She had so obviously, ever since you met in the little square sitting area in front of the theater,
wanted you to.
How she had looked into your eyes tonight, sometimes happily, with a barely stilled energy;
sometimes big and unblinking, imploringly, for a second.
How her lips had grinned up unconsciously as she watched you looking down along the inner
edge of her shirt down her neck, the softly white skin of her chest.
Because of what she did when she saw the Sissy Spacek shrine— she got it, and she took a
picture of it just for herself.
And because of that whole bit she did about John Boehner, the old Speaker of the House: that
she knew there’d never be a revolution in this country when we all acceded to letting them
make us call him Bay-nor— the phonetically unreasonable BAY-nor, when we could have
been, for four years, calling the Speaker of the House John Boner, and we had the chance to
call the #3 in the line of succession by the name John Boner and we just gave that up, without
even trying— Never be a revolution here
Then the way the back garden behind the theater had looked when you’d gotten out of the
movie, the grounds and the trees all black the sky still azure.
Then how everything had become a violetdark as your eyes got used to the outside, the sky a
blue luminous all over.
The nightscents of the garden, the breezing air, the light dew of the cooling grass.
You’d wanted to feel it: this gladdening.
You’d wanted to feel that she was pretty.
Yet you hadn’t been able to draw that out.
Not until now,
Now that you can look over at her and feel honestly that she is.

But the next moment you come to know that you’d had to draw that feeling out of yourself,
That you wouldn’t have felt it if you hadn’t been,
That you won’t feel it when you stop.
And you look down across to her shoulder,
And then up back behind the bench.
Palm-of-the-Hand poem #3: He said No, of course not: no, no no no
He said No, of course not: no, no no no
Because the girl had just started to look at him
Fixedly, holding, so much that she sometimes followed a beat behind when he moved.
And there was a time she’d been looking at him and, while she still looked at him, her eyes became
distant, soft.
And she’d been the one to suggest dinner last Saturday,
Then the museum today.
After he’d been the one to suggest everything before.
So he had to make sure that she knew:
So he said No— That was just— She’s a friend.
It’s nothing: we just both like Wes Anderson.
It’s not romantic— Nothing romantic.

But the look was no longer on the girl’s face,
Because the girl had only been made avid by the idea of someone else.
And the look didn’t come back to the girl’s face,
And she didn’t suggest anything for them to do next.
She didn’t talk to him anymore.