The Stole

A new poem by Paula Bohince 

Photo Credit: Cindy Funk, courtesy of Creative Commons

In the shadow of Le Bon Marché, in the park
by the café where adolescents in stripes and sunglasses
let Coca~Colas languish in voluptuous
glass, passing,
like a joint, a pair of headphones, glide
of French rap caressing
the woman on a bench, in her dotage, gripped
by a novel.  She pets, between pages, the fox at rest
on her shoulder.  He’s in his last phase,
emptied of bone, viscera, all emotion.  But when she gasped
at some action, didn’t he react
in tandem?  Fur bristling, eyes avid, like her groom
redux, improving his until death do us promise.

PAULA BOHINCE's latest book is Swallows and Waves (2016). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The TLS, and elsewhere.

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