You gripe about waiting twenty minutes
by the aquarium, a tiny crack
on its face, cichlids swimming
their filtered circus, blue fish
with a needy look, each fin stroke
an instinctive hope the world
will soon get bigger --
the hostess finally calls your name,
her dress sprinkled with polyester stars,
drinks and dinner by a window,
the way we feel caught in glass.
Outside, the boulevard is red with rain,
stoplights splashing their artificial hearts
on sidewalk constellations, double lives
refusing to wash away. Silk ferns
quiver beneath a vent's metal gills
as Maurice the graphologist works
the tables, his card in an ashtray.
From the oracle of your scribbled name
flaws and virtues rise like bubbles --
closed e's mean you need to open up.
You're amazed to be so easily revealed,
believe everything is moving toward
fulfillment. You tell me about your
childhood and predilections
but there are lots of names
for what happens on the surface --
time is a mood, biography a smokescreen,
this evening another back and forth
in the date tank where knowing
is just an impulse waiting to spill.