The Shuffle

Skipping out from the major international cocktail party

with my becleavaged blight, a jeroboam in her tight fist,

I broke open my copy of Sarcasm for Beginners, i.e., men.

Never had I seen so many pairs of to-the-elbow gloves.

Never did I see a puttoed ceiling groan so with thin talk

as the great, the grim and the gone pressed terrible flesh,

so many penguins offering tastesome wisps and skimps

from doilied salvers: cherry-shaded caviar, cheese puffs,

dark sugared berries, dainty octopods, gently vinegared,

with not enough tentacles to count the capes and stoles,

fine bespoke pashminas, silk snoods, at least one vicuña

suit, tainted with gold thread. I’d seen down a Blenheim,

two Lime Rickeys and was eyeing a gamine mixologist

who was straining out Savoy Royales when my raddled

nemesis limped over to announce she had encountered

my latest screed, all four foot eleven of her tortoiseishly

quivering, a nubbin of cream cheese on her whiskery lip

and her good eye withering my borrowed companionette

as she leaned on air. I am not a man who has not known

the turmoil women offer, the gift you accept of their wit,

the way you’d slip a hand into a gloveful of cockroaches,

comply with a last-minute call to join a seal cull. Tanya,

I pouted, I am awed and honored you opened a window

in your schedule even to glance at my inconsequential

outpourings. At which point she clattered out a scoffing

gibe so sour you couldn’t blend it with a chemistry set

from Hamley’s and, seizing my escort by her neat wrist,

we tore out onto Jermyn Street, along which I performed

a sort of shuffle, one eye on the book and one on m’lady’s

competition-standard backside as she led us to the Ritz.