The Diners – Richard Fleming

The woman with provocative hair
is sitting at a rhombic table
with a man whose bow-tie is a daffodil.
Waiters flicker to and fro, like great white bats,
navigating among tables and themselves
by means of high, inaudible squeaks.
She taps her menu with a scarlet finger,
looks up, smiles. Her skin is alabaster pale.
Bow-Tie Man has a small black beard,
shaped like an arrowhead,
with streaks of silver.
His black eyes twinkle.
She orders baby’s ribs, he choses artists’ fingers.
They call for soup distilled from human tears.
To follow, they will share poet’s brain with vegetables al dente.
A chateau-bottled red will wash it down.
They speak in cultured accents
of mutual acquaintances in non-existent cities
where music is forbidden and clocks do not exist.
They talk of towers constructed underground,
lit through by neon,
tall rooms, suffused with pulsing light,
where fish swim languidly in streams of air.
When served, he eats the fingers slowly,
discards small bones into a patterned bowl,
brings napkin to mouth, dabs his beard.
They drink the broth of tears: pronounce it salty.
The Woman’s lips, a blood-red wound,
open and close like an anemone.
She laughs shrilly, pats Bow-Tie’s hand,
falls on the small ribs, devours them like a wolf.
The waiters come, replenish glasses;
serve up the poet’s brain
on a dish shaped like a massive coin.
Surgeon-like, the waiters
sever hemisphere from hemisphere
with glinting knives like scalpels,
their movements quick, decisive, confident,
borne of experience and expertise.
Then they retreat and the diners commence.

He takes the left side, she the right.
Their teeth are sharp and very white.

Richard Fleming