by Daniel R. Jones
(Note: this poem was originally published by Anxious Poet Society in their November 2018 issue.)
It’s nothing like a chess problem,
the toggling ardor,
this advance and retreat;
forward then back all black,
white and cerebral.
It’s nothing like chess;
like the leather hand
stuck to a black bishop
I saw in a public park,
an ancient mind whirring overhead.
It’s not chess,
but one could be forgiven
for assuming it was that
premeditated.
More like a dance.
An ebb and flow,
fluid undulation of hips
he pedals her back.
She retreats, persists,
parries and twists;
she comes on again
and he surrenders
before regrouping to
flit forward.
The two wax and wane.
She was head and hands
when all he’d ever known
were girls made up of wrist and throat-
Romances filled to the brim with heat and steam–
that fissured and cracked
when they cooled too quickly.
It’s nothing like chess
in any way whatsoever,
save one.
The Queen’s range of motion
far outmatches the King’s.
And maybe it’s something of a game.
Amusing, at least, when she quotes Hemingway:
”What do you want to do?
Ruin me?”
“Yes. I want to ruin you.”
Bez&Co 