TRIPTYCH IN NOIR

her jailed lover’s image in the mirror slowly loses color like tea poured again & again from the same leaves or a cloud of cigarette smoke mixing with the air

beneath the mirror’s mercury lies the captain lost at sea in some interminable corrido his waterproof watch still ticks inside his slicker

it’s past 3:00 light from the street lamp filters through the slats of the blind outshines the moon: two sets of stripes that cross at an oblique angle on the walls & the bed where she lies staring into the one dark corner