In The Bistro Poem by Morgan Michaels

Valentine's day just a few days off
it was charming how after a hefty meal
of coq au vin and greasy frites
and wine enough to raddle a pancreas

you shot that loaded straw my way
me leaving, from your battery behind
the bar. Harmlessly the paper slip fluttered by
filled, assassin, with the breath of your lips,

before coasting to rest on the floor-
well before that fine day when Loves'
dart burns the air, seeking a warm breast
in which to rest and germinate song.

Discretely, though it was late and diners
few, I stopped, picked it up, flattened it out
drew it under my nose as though it were
a rose, a scented billet doux, and dropped it

on the counter back to you who merely
bent far, far back and shook and shook
darkly with gallic laughter. The gall!
graceful, turncoat scion of pig-farmers.

Outside I smiled in the cold that turned
huffy exhalations into cirrhus wreathes,
that prank having warmed my bones to the ruddy core-
We are all just peasants with degrees,

and vowed, the coming holy day night, to return
armed with a dozen straws or so to make of mine
enemy a laughing porcupine, my memory
only for these vendettas long, but that's about all.