Sonya Taaffe

A Gun and a Boy (Le Cercle Rouge)

You need, to plan the perfect heist,
some jewels you care nothing for,
a marksman who loves cordite more than whiskey,
a face so beautiful
it approaches forgetfulness.
You need your lover, stirring in borrowed pajamas beside you,
the saturnine anchor of your calculations,
the rose he left on the dresser to remind you
that both of you have hearts
and you can die.

Sonya Taaffe's short fiction and poetry can be found mostly recently in the collection Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press) and in the anthologies Spelling the Hours: Poetry Celebrating the Forgotten Others of Science and Technology, An Alphabet of Embers: An Anthology of Unclassifiables, Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place, and Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror. She once named a Kuiper belt object.