Photo Shoot, Roseland Park Cemetery, July 1985

The photos arrived, tucked inside your letter with its paragraphs
of charm as preamble for the main point, dagger-honed,
that stabbed me by surprise. You’d made an effort

to tiptoe around the graves, you said, and not disturb
the dead—as you’d been taught—while Jade and I 
traipsed upon the grassy mounds. We laid our lissome

bodies down, entwined long limbs, and posed while you 
fiddled with the focus on your new Canon and subdued
the stirring in your khaki pants. Lovers, closeted

even from our close friends, we took advantage
of the chance to ham it up, to touch. Like me, she wore 
black: leather gloves, my fedora, and a camisole stark 

against her pale arms and sharp collarbones. She’d brought
fancy silver cutlery and her handgun, which I triple-checked
to assure the chambers were bullet-free before I cocked

my head and pressed my temple to its snubbed nose—
Behind me, a granite family marker slumped, engraved
with my last name, and behind it, Jade draped

her thick cascade of hip-length hair across the tombstone.
That’s perfect, you praised, and sank to one knee 
to take aim. At yet another grave, she straddled me,

pretended to plunge a knife into my jugular vein
as I arched back, feigning agony. Your gat-toothed grin
lurked in the shadow of the lens. The day was sunny,

but you’d misjudged the aperture or shutter speed,
and the photos came out underexposed, in grainy shades
of green and black, our skin a phantom pallor—

a success of a mistake, a complement to the grim
backdrop. As for your after-the-fact admission 
of prim disapproval, you hypocrite, my friend:

the locale was your suggestion, the photo shoot a fantasy 
you bashfully confessed. And while we were game—
game as in happy to indulge, game as in the target of your hunt—

your letter keeps us in your crosshairs a different way.
I note you failed to specify which pictures you blew up 
to mount like trophies for prominent display.