Roger Pfingston Game after a photograph by Duane Michals Two friends are playing cards. One of them is cheating.                              -D.M. Bare-chested, they are young men, beautiful, such as Cavafy would've admired in a poem after a moment in a cafe or a small shop off the beaten path. The one standing by the window, his eyes masked in shadow, looks down at the other whose mind is elsewhere. Sunlight slants, lighting their faces like something half remembered. Cheating at cards? Perhaps. Or is it a question of with whom and since when? They will play the game out and it will seem forever until one of them decides enough and quietly says he must rise early, to which the other will smile and shrug as he turns his unplayed hand face down, recalling a fragment of dream--an old man weeping unashamedly in the streets.

h