Menage Trois Noir
She was angry I brought the shovel and gun,
despite her saying we were shooting a noir.
But she wouldn’t speak, and seemed blinded
by shadows filtering through venetian blinds,
where dust and darkness gather into twilight.
I tried asking her in French what was wrong,
but the words that came out merely bled
more confusion into our hideous scenario.
I was then bombarded by an anguish worse
than an angry woman’s that won’t speak of it,
for the door opened and in walked her lover—
hat angled feverishly, not delicately like mine—
his pin striped suit contained a lesser man;
but his gun was real, not plastic like the one
she gave me to stare down his revenge.
I had no last thought, nor did director call cut.
Rather, headlights poured through the blinds,
revealing motes of emptiness and not twilight:
Transfixed by our own constellation—this
three-pointed diagram burning in the night—
standing silent, overwhelmed but titillated,
our hands raised like old props for the stars;
each trying to hush the moment of truth,
to still—perhaps seal—our place in time.
• • •
Galen Cunningham is a poet, essayist, 
and fiction writer from Colorado.