[Michael Cantor]

Here are a few old monorhymes of mine. The first was published in the The Cumberland Review, and the second in Iambs & Troches - both journals are long since defunct. I wonder if there's a message there?


The Disappearance

There were no kids, the dogs are dead, and we’re
completely out of touch. Old friends lived near,
and now or then I’d get a call and hear
that one had seen her, sitting in the rear
at some designer’s show, or sipping kir
with groups of those young men who just appear
at every function, slim and cavalier,
and that she still looked good – but slightly queer,
and was not aging well – and I would fear
that she had asked for me. But year by year
my thoughts and interests moved from there to here.
The friends are gone – no longer volunteer
small updates on her sightings. Would a tear
or two in private now be real – or insincere?


Above Fat Papa's Bar in Casablanca

Café on the veranda: Ilsa sleek,
her hair now set off by a silver streak,
as beautiful as ever, still a chic
and polished avatar of high-boned cheek.

The room appeared as if we’d spent a week
in bed instead of just one night – the reek
of sex and flat champagne, two flutes, all shriek
of carnal, sweat-drenched, sweet reunion; pique
my appetite for more.

................................. But she seems bleak:
“It won't work, Rick. You've lost the old mystique,
and turned into an aging film-crazed geek –
a droning and obsessive one-note freak.”

The French doors close, but not before I speak,
“We'll still have Paris, kid, and that was magnifique!”


And here's one which, mirroring the action of the poem, starts as a monorhyme, but eventually breaks free:


Tour de France

I think of what it’s like to team with Lance
for three weeks through the peaks and flats of France
and have no chance; to ride with worker ants,
a mere plongeur, a windbreak to advance
another’s goal; to pedal with your pants
piss-drenched each day, and then – just when the trance
of pain plateaus – to catch a sideward glance,
of praying mantis eyes and limbs that dance

past in an instant: I know I’d want to prance
in yellow once; dream that, perhaps today,
I bolt the peleton, slash through the pack
and pull away – a savage, swift attack
that stirs the crowd's, "allez" - and shrug, and say:
“C'est pour la France - et pour egalite!”