With boot resting on the aytch of the barstool,
the flaneur, blaming tourism’s dwindle,
offers a seducer’s lie in local dialect.
He’ll see she greets midnight as one of the blessed.
One of the winners in the casino, where fantasies
are pegged numerically as hotel rooms, snowblind
croupiers fumbling bills with novocaine fingers,
prosthetic claws. Listening to the crash of the
pianola’s lid, rewarding her, like every good girl
on the guest list, with violets, amphetamines,
and whisky. He excuses himself for a trip to the
loo, leaving her to feel free, and tipsy, and miraculously sad.