Beating Jack Copyright © Rob Lock 2010

We are playing Beating Jack - not Stripping Him Naked
or Buggering our Neighbour, as she used to say,
though dicey sex seems more to the forefront
of her stripped mind now than ever before -
and she’s laughing; it’s almost as it was.

She doesn’t recall how many for a queen,
how many for an ace, but has resurrected
the knack of a sneaky look at the card
she’s about to play; the dexterity to lay
a different one instead long since AWOL.

I ask if she remembers Cheat when Cameron
was little, and pointed and gasped ‘But Dad!’
every time I lied. She says yes, and I wonder
if it’s true. And if she sometimes dredges up
the time, now lost to me, when she led and I followed.