One Where It’s a Spaghetti Western Anyway by Andrew Donovan via Other Poetry

One clarification—the horse mid-jump,
saddle emptied, focal point of a blue-tinted,
mesa-filled horizon, deserted when a southbound train
forced us to opposite sides of the track,

was my idea of arrivederci. Now you peck away at single keys,
not bothering with home row, in search of L’estasi dell’oro.
The inbox clangor—the important data
forwarded: Questo è il mio Inferno.

You’ve done well to capture the way we letterboxed
each other’s eyes. You ask if I still watch too many
of these things. Yeah. I trust Ennio’s big brass
and swelling strings

find you asleep, not quite Claudia Cardinale,
softer probably, as you sweat out Fluoxetine
next to your skinhead boyfriend
(I didn’t know about him).

Still, I worry I might see you inching toward me,
a hazy shade, extraterrestrial in desert heat, a female
Henry Fonda come to inflict one of cinema’s
greatest crane shots. I say, “Not that. Not the harmonica. Not…”