She claims V. never really
played the cello, it played him,

making of him an instrument of melancholy.
Cigarettes rolled in a T-shirt sleeve,

dark hair feathered with olive oil,
his were the deep-sunk eyes

women dreamed in compact mirrors.
On good days, he spoke

of the largess of America, Hollywood,
a restaurant with his name in lights.

On bad, even Lucifer must
carry his own bible.

Of the final time
she saw him: his hands, their long, sad

fingernails, a filterless twirled
like Fred Astaire’s cane.

He asked for a twenty spot,
swore he was aces. In the car idling

under a streetlamp, a fedora
in a raccoon collar sucking a toothpick.

The photo she keeps on the fireplace mantel
captures him tottering at the edge

of the frame, as if about to capsize
into obsolescence, face down in a ditch

or on a train to a land
of a long, untranslatable curse.