romance

September 29, 2022

APPROACHING NIGHT

Arising into night
the departing sun
tangos away with its cloud,
memories soon forgotten.

Other dancers take the stage,
now a romance, now
a war dance, feathers raised
in prayer to unseen gods.

Night will soon bring
its curtain across this stage,
the avian casts’ final bows taken
the theater will darken, awaiting
another performance,
a new script tomorrow,
but for this solitary moment
of frozen grace, it is we
who write the conversation,
our lines sung by actors who
know only nature’s
unrelenting song.

First Published in Half Hour to Kill, August 2022
https://halfhourtokill.com/home/approaching-night-by-louis-faber

January 28, 2022

LAUNDRY LOVE

In the older romcom movies
there was often a meetcute
taking place in a laundromat.

I have spent far too many hours
in laundromats when traveling
on extended business trips.

I found one in Santa Cruz
with a coffee shop and figured
it was where romance would bloom.

I spend more than a few hours
watching but while the coffee
was always pouring, an espresso

or cappuccino hissing away,
I never saw a couple form, a date
offered, just a dryer tumbling

hopes and dreams, as they
withered in the heat, awaiting
the lonely basket home.

December 11, 2021

CINEMATIC MEMORY

You want to shout that they don’t make movies like they used to, romantic comedies without R ratings for gratuitous sex or language. We both know this is true, but the problem is not that they don’t make those movies, that is the symptom. The problem is that they don’t make audiences like they used to, ones that loved thoughtful romantic comedies, and filmmakers always stoop to the mass of audiences o matter how low they have to go, for that is where the money is.

October 29, 2021

CONVERSATION

Arising into night
the departing sun
tangoes away with its cloud,
memories soon forgotten.
Other dancers take the stage,
now a romance, now
a war dance, feathers raised
in prayer to unseen gods.
Night will soon bring
its curtain across this stage,
the avian cast’s final bows taken
the theatre will darken, awaiting
another performance,
a new script tomorrow,
but for this solitary moment
of frozen grace, it is we
who write the conversation,
our lines sung by actors who
know only nature’s
unrelenting song.

June 20, 2021

COUPLING

Walking through the art gallery,
she frequently pauses to look
at paintings of couples in a bar
or a cafe, engaged in conversation.

I tell her they seem sad, as though
whatever romance they had
has waned, they having grown
apart, this a parting of sorts.

She laughs and says that I mistake
wistfulness for sadness, men
so often do, and adds they are
lovers falling ever deeper in.

She takes my hand gently, with
a look I might have deemed sad,
but knowing better. I realize
that I, too, am continuing my fall.

October 4, 2018

ENGLISH CLASS

He had planned
the exercise for weeks,
certain this one
would allow them
to break through the wall
that had imprisoned
the metaphors within them.
It was simple, and that
was its beauty, too many
attempts had become
bogged down, mired in
the fear that words
could do the greatest harm.
The exercise is simple,
he said, and they
put pens to paper.
Later, toward the end
of class, “would one of you
be kind enough
to read to the class
your description
of a young woman’s lips?”
One boy meekly rose
and through half clenched
teeth said, “Her lips
were precisely shaped
to barely cover her teeth.”

First appeared in The Right to Depart, Plainview Press, (2008).