A man poses at a dimly lit table,
a light hangs directly overhead
with a cobweb ribbon-wrapped around
the steel wire escaping the ceiling.
An inverted roulette table,
a man betting against the house:
It is always this way.
Light flickers, flipped on,
and off, and on,
without a switch
with which to assert control.
He is alone in the squeaking chair,
sipping tea and dipping his crumb-covered
hands into the napkin-covered basket
of water crackers and salted peanuts.

Sitting, he poses for practice, but for now,
he practices for no one.
The house is empty.
In the back of his mind, there is no worry
of what one will find upon entering
the kitchen: A scarecrow at a table,
full of straw and teeth dulled down
from night grinding,
sitting in, what could be mistaken
as, a pensive position.

The scavenger hand makes him look wanting.
It's partner is propped on chin,
accompanied by his half-sculpted smile
and the dark-light contrast of his hair and eyes
with yellow shining off of his two front teeth.
The color is not the fault of stumbling home
too late to care for the mouth, but of the old
incandescent staring him down
and the obsessively clean, marble surface
at which he puckers his face.

A tapping in the hall stirs his bones
and his body darts up.
A crow, it seems, with small grey beak
has wandered in from the overgrown fields,
the fields that haven't been tended to
since this boy began taking himself too seriously.
The both of them with stilts for legs
and no breeze of running feet
from scream to sway the pair of pairs.
Their eyes connect and neither moves.
Who should place the first bet,
black or red,
and who will set the ball in motion?

The light goes off.
Denoument is a bad time
for a bulb to die.
As calm as a hand
with razorblade against skin,
the scarecrow sits down once again
and poses.
The bird observes his motion,
calls, and waits,
but the man moves no more,
overjoyed with an invisible audience,
a full stomach.