The Card-Counter

I knew a guy once, banned from all casinos
for being able to do it. He had this look in his eyes
which was kind of dead, like two lost marbles.
He told me how he’d started playing the tables.

He’d been normal before. Bit of a ladies’ man
he said, until he met his queen, and settled down.
He used to write her songs and play them to her.
Not very good, he said, but she told him they were.
He told me with a wry smile they’d first made love
in a public toilets and he’d pledged his life
to her that night, and she had done the same.
She’d even got a tattoo of his name.

The biggest irony was she cheated on him.
He was so cut up, that same night he left home
and started working the tables. That’s when he hit
upon his system, he told me. Nothing to it:
take each card and make a mental image
then find a way to break it, really damage
it, as though that thing had been destroyed, utterly.

As he was telling me this, I could sense that he
still wasn’t quite as over her as he’d let on.
His voice broke, or threatened to, now and then.
But I didn’t say anything. I just
carried on listening as he reeled off his list.
I can’t remember them all, but recall he floundered
thinking of one for the Queen of Diamonds
till he recovered her fondness for gemstones and broke
the ring he’d bought but never given her. Look,
he said, there are hard and there are easy cards.
The best he came up with for the Queen of Spades
was her digging his grave beside a broken khazi.
The King of Hearts? Well that one was easy.

This poem © Oliver Tearle 2022. From Infinity Pool (Newtnext Press).