Zooerotica

The first time I meet K I walk into his bedroom,

tie my blue horse to his bed pole and leave it to graze on the ghosts

of his former lovers. They are legion and all quite different.

The sudden neigh of my gorging horse makes me wet.

Before copulating, I ask him to read some poems.

He puts on his eyeglasses and he reads, what else,

if not a Bukowski poem! All day long, as wolves and foxes

eat my heart from his hands, I let him pet the creatures inside me.

Into the next room

I try to write a poem, but the poem leaves no

shadow. My brain is glass shards. My mouth

is dirt. Most of my lovers are far away.

In the coffin we are two: my husband and I.

He is sitting at the table, eating his dinner,

as husbands do, silently. Later he listens to the radio.

I clear the table and do the dishes.

Somewhere, in the distance, a wood thrush sings.

Are we dead? I do not know.

As long as you read this, I am only slipped

away into the next room.*

  *Henry Scott-Holland