Cafe Notre Dame

Narrated by Kristine Doll

Massachusetts

 

CAFÉ NOTRE DAME 

 

A sort of sexual trauma 

has this couple in its thrall 

He is holding both her hands

in both his hands 

She is kissing his hands 

They are looking in each other’s eyes 

up close 

She has a fur coat 

made of a hundred running rabbits 

He 

is wearing a formal 

dark coat and dove grey trousers 

Now they are inspecting the palms 

of each other’s hands 

as if they were maps of Paris 

or of the world 

As if they were looking for the Metro 

That would take them together 

through subterranean ways 

through the stations of desire 

to love’s final terminals 

at the ports of the city of light 

It is a terminal case 

But they are losing themselves 

in the crisscrossing lines 

of their intertwined palms 

their head-lines and their heart-lines 

Their fate-lines and life-lines 

illegibly entangled 

in the mons veneris