Image: ‘PARADISE’ © Cecilia Paredes. Courtesy of Galería Blanca Berlin and Photo London

Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.

SILHOUETTE WASHED IN BETTER SILHOUETTES

Though she was not a dancer
in the theatre he said to her
please wear your ballerina shoes.
I want to see you
more softly than the rest do.
He was a painter and she more quiet
than any painter
and he called her Moonflower
and he called her “Silhouette
Bathed in Other Silhouettes”
and though she suspected
he was not a good painter
it sold for sixty dollars
and they ate shrimp cocktail
and prime rib at The Landing.

They were happy; her skin was, too,
when they met for breakfast
which was only coffee and a roll
and he said I think “Silhouette
Washed in Better Silhouettes”
would have been better
and perhaps a hound or two in it.
After breakfast they went
to the cinema, a Fellini matinee,
and he hummed and touched her thigh
and when Dominic Savio,
just an image, drowsed, he did, too.