I.
Their muscles pulse a pedestrian iteration
of the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth
through steel ducts vacant of treated air,
or alternately inside the labyrinthine walls of a house
as antipodal as its occupants.
In one moment, there is the clang of a taut rawhide tail
against a pipe and in the next, dishes crash
like gritted teeth as they are pushed into a sink.
Vermin, your breath the kiss of a riptide
as it draws life to a casket, your fur grey
like breathing underwater beneath a heavy steel coat,
your hackneyed scent of indolence,
your hiss the sibilant threat of a time long past
when weak travellers on forest’s floors
would sleep near famished dangers and
wake into the world to find they had no eyes,
you shall not make your mischief here.
II.
The dog comes into the room.
With a curious look on her face, Anna,
voice raised, excoriates her canine friend.
“Hey! I wasn’t joking about wanting to feel
like Salome. Bring me a fucking rat.”
III.
The tension on the spring was mocking my wrist
and muttering beneath its breath at each of my fingers.
In a darkling hour the gnawing shearing of that rigid jaw
shuttered on a wooden bed. A shriek tore a small hole
in the night and pestilential lips turned livid. Before I went to discard
the corpse, les autres had already torn into the liver
and the heart and if they had possessed more time
I would perhaps have found only a crushed spine
and the slight stains of the executioner’s boot.
With a spoon large like the ones I use for ice cream
I delicately place pellets with colors of cotton candy
into certain places where water and time
had long played the saboteur. I wrapped the rest in plastic
and tied the top with something meant for women’s hair
and put it into a cabinet six feet off of the ground.
Some days later, a bag of caramels would find itself
in a state of mild disarray while upon a kitchen counter.
IV.
We returned home to find that the dog had shredded
into what was intended to be paired with afternoon coffee.
Minutes later it would become evident that she
was similarly intrigued by anticoagulants.
V.
Days later the frozen ground gasped when the spade’s sharp edge
apologized for broken sleep and carved the silhouette of constellations.
“Dust and dust and dust.
Our Gods are thus.”
A trinity of lucid things, elusive as ivory hefted on hollow wings,
did not compete with whiskey’s amber. The mortal clasp of the moon
made all hope of rapture as futile as attempted flight.
We planned to flee for the state line at two p.m. that very day.
She wished for a coffinless earthen embrace.
When I perish I shall be composed of shadow.
Our souls will dance with the elegance of leaves.
We were starved for perfection- a good life after a war,
the cooled ardor of fingertips after the passing of a teasing moment;
fidelity like a bonfire, our savage concrete tongues whispering
about the sandpapered rasp of time, our teeth short daggers
aimed at the throats of angels.
VI.
My lover never wonders if there are any others
for she sees the way that I embrace a bottle.
VII.
I drank too much again.
When I wake I am not wearing clothes but I cannot remember
their removal so I am sure that I should be ashamed:
the soft felt of cotton has abandoned me in apathy,
the warmth of blankets on me makes them despise their natures,
if it were not for the promise of arrest I would wander naked
in the deep grey haze of morning, condemned
to circular streets with my memories chaff in the wind.
I drank too much again.
She is not furious with me. She does not even tell me to leave.
Steam rises from a drain (a bit of minced onion
and a shred of basil garnishing a stainless grate).
She wordlessly lights a cigarette, forgets it after a minute and a half,
then slowly burns into another as she waves a plume of sulfur in the air.
She is displeased but she is not surprised.
Though today it will merit me a glare, my vision is transfixed
on the consonance of her curves as she leans over her couch.
In the mornings her glow is always of the Huntress
and the redness of her mouth makes my skin
into a thousand frightened points and she is Latin
(hallowed syllables impossible to properly pronounce)
and the repetitions of my breath crawl
and are fastened to the primal divine.
