Sleight of Hand

Between hands, she would lower the disguise
And clockwise meet each player's eyes,
One by one, pair to pair. How she could dance
Between five men, and cultivate romance
With them, granting separately the fleeting shards
Of her select attention during cards --

When someone shuffled, when she held no cards,
No faces, colors, numbers to disguise,
She would shatter her desire into shards
And portion out the pieces through her eyes --
In equal measure, indulging in romance
With every gambling man who knew the dance.

Nor were these the sort to spurn a dance,
Despite the moral drawn from years at cards,
Of mute stakes and tacit counting in romance
And what a woman gains by this disguise.
Did she account for the sharpness in their eyes
When she was dealing out her heart in shards,

Or the daggers on their laps, or the shards
They carried up their sleeves during the dance?
The signals coded in their hands and eyes
Spoke not only of a game of cards
Which for their lust was mere disguise,
But of the irony of the romance.

More, the affront implied by a romance
Meant to defract their focus into shards
Of jealous passion and fraternal disguise:
Because he felt a sting who lost the dance,
It was suspected she could stack the cards
With a careful flicker of her eyes.

The thought whereof brought murder to the eyes
Of the men who lost their chances to romance,
Though they had long since folded in their cards
Which lay six-times shuffled, splayed like shards,
Face-up on the table. The woman's dance
Provoked a violence they could not disguise.

Everyone has eyes. One fault in the disguise
Will dance like water in the light; and though romance
Was in the cards, they fell on her with shards.