Canasta for Lovers

Hold the hearts close to your heart:
they’ll feed each other blooms of colour

and the nudity of shapes
until you are bursting

with the need to hold it all in.
For you must never call a spade a spade:

your lover is angular, a dark, cemetery stranger.
Look at your lover that way.

Diamonds, the distraction of arithmetic,
can be anyone’s friend.

Clubs are for striking.
When you foresee the end,

get out before your lover does.
Enjoy the orgasm of discarding.

Withstand the afterglow
of solitude and spite.

 

First published in The Age in 2006

 

Maria Takolander is a Melbourne poet, and ABR's featured poet of the month.

 

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