I wore wild;
a key-scraped cloak at shoulders
you, a selkie-gown, woven in strands of gold and honey
my wolf swallowed the moon
and would not sleep
for thirty days
I found you hiding beneath the tree
shaking frost from the leaves
as if spring might slip free
I hid a caramel apple amongst the fallen fruit.
you found poisoned slumber
and I stretched your dreams into a net
for a perfect drop of blood
tonight, I will hang the red moon
and my wolf will finally
sleep again
I am no longer shadow cast, or sinner spent.
I am not the sound of a motorcycle going past, or the many-fingered lightning strike.
Nor the promise in heavy rain, or the dark prince in your story.
I am not the wolf at your heels.
I am only the words you left behind.
Do not be sane.
Or give up your thirst.
Do not loosen your grip on the harmony of need and grace.
Or let slip your memory of the low cry when caught between curiosity and desperation.
Do not forget the language of lips to wrist, and teeth to pulse.
Or the spaces between.
Do not ignore the lullaby that leaves you bereft.
Or the cradle used to kindle your fire.
Do not hide from the torrent, the river, the rain.
Or the unwise but sumptuous words that fill you.
—
You will not be cleansed of sin, or forgiven your trespass. You will not be given penance or allowed absolution.
But you will know love (and the glory of life).
(I want furtive words.)
rose-tipped and rose-clipped,
prey and pray
into disarray
threatening to make
a hunger of my wolf
instead a wolf of my hunger
bit by the hand
that feeds it
Tigriss.
I awoke to the sound of thunder today, and in the moments that followed, I thought of you.
‘If it rains,’ I thought, ‘If the skies open and there is a downpour – I will stay home today and hunt you.’
I want you wet, soaked by the rain.
And I will pin you to the door.
One hand on your wrists, drawing them over your head.
The other brushing wet strands of hair from your neck, touching lightly.
“Here.” I will say.
Your shoulder, shirt drawn aside. “Here.”
The low undercurve of a breast, “And here.”
And then I am kneeling, to draw your shirt up over your hips, breath warm against your skin.
Bared skin is a calling; I continue to name the places I kiss. “Hips,” lips parted, wet and warm. I follow the lines, your pelvic bone, dragging clothing low, followed by the hint of teeth.
Deceptive, how gentle each kiss is, lulling you into a rhythm and pattern of surrender that I learned by listening to your heartbeat.
But the gentleness is a lie, and you know it as my hands expose more. Small kisses turning into small bites, hands that are almost rough as they uncover more skin.
“Thighs,” spoken low enough for you to feel the word, etched against the smooth expanse along your inner thigh. You would think me impatient but for the deliberate cruelty I show in laying each kiss against your rain-slick skin.
Oh, you are too perfect to relinquish.
It would be easier to forget the rain or the wind today than forget how it feels when the heat of your blood rises through your skin.
to heel; tight grip, gold-linked-chain
here
wrapped across my palm,
a subtlety
not lost on the kinder
edge
(or the marks it leaves behind)
“You have to go,” she murmured before falling asleep in my arms.
—
I pride myself on my self-control.
But I was nearing my limit.
Even half-asleep, curled naked next to me, she couldn’t help herself; her small curved ass pressed back against me, moving slowly, and I felt myself harden until I was nestled firmly against her.
It was such a small shift, an almost-mistake, and I was no longer pressed up against her — I was inside, my hands on her hips and one leg across her own, moving in the same slow rhythm in which her ass had stroked me into rigid need.
I was startled by how well she fit me, how easy it felt being inside her.
Hands on her legs, I lifted and held them together as I moved on top, driving down, pinning her against the hotel bed sheets. For the first time there were no false protests, no modesty-saving indecision, only: “I like…being fucked…like this…”
—
Later, curled against me again, less asleep, she said, “…but really, you have to go…”
I see the crows in your paintings
(church steeple crowded, fruit-core born)
and I want to collect them all.
I want a shadow of crows, a silent blanket fort of crows like I used to have when I was younger and didn’t yet understand that black is the blend of colors.
(which makes the rook the most colorful bird of all)
Once I have all of the crows, I will weave them into a cape, drape hood over head, crook one arm, and pretend I am the cousin of death (his father’s side), come riding on a palfrey of patched white, whooping and hollering all the way down.
a red dress
a red dress,
a red dress.
Second only to a black dress, as a favorite of mine.
(picture courtesy of a rather photogenic friend of mine)
There is a way of writing that doesn’t stop at the end of a page. The words continue, letter by letter, across the margins and past the edge of the paper. You can’t see it, but they don’t stop there. Dark limbs, they stretch outward, streaks of black across an amber sky.
Winter-boned, too dusky to be stark, they are bloody insistent. They are symptom and ailment both: red-eyed, bleeding fingers, unheard voices and low growls.
But I’m not afraid of them; I have a Cronusian appetite and my children will make a fine meal.
For they are ash, incense incarnate, the Wednesday of the soul, and they have no voice but that of my less-then-meek typing.