GABRIELLE

Past the black iron lacework on Royal,
the cyclist’s sputtering engine
reverberates upon narrow
streets and off Vieux Carré buildings.
Très chic, her lithe body straddles
the Triumph’s sounds in Gallic
hauteur.  The British motor vibrates
along inner thighs to Mediterranean
nerve endings.  A picture by Delacroix,
she is Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
A black spherical helmet half covers
her cranium and is strapped to chin
by leather.  Softly cropped,
dark brown hair is boyishly caught
in laissez faire abandon.  I imagine her
in a Phrygian cap.  I tremble
at the chocolate extravagance
of velour pantaloons and Catalan
jacket, an unbuttoned paisley blouse.
The body erect like a message carrier
of Le Résistance, her Latin face
straight-ahead wavers.  For a second
I look into the liquid eyes
of Marseilles…faraway, almost remote.
Her name must be Giselle or Gabrielle.
Surely, she has a discreet tattoo
of a devil on the left buttock
or nape of her neck.  She speaks
English casually with a noticeable accent.
Once, she succumbed to a brief
and incomplete liaison with a lesbian
before concluding many men were better.
Her back recedes as she promenades,
fumes of exhaust, pungent fantasy.
I want to drink thick coffee and smoke
a shared Gauloise as we
discuss Camus on dirty sheets.
In the garret’s semidarkness, I smell
the garlic on her olive skin.  Why, I want
to ask, the story behind the Triumph?
This alone leaves me unsatisfied.
I refuse to entertain the possibility
that such a vision is from Arkansas.