ANNA JOURNEY

Night with Eros in the Story of Leather (2)
                  We do
     lose what we never had.
          —Beckian Fritz Goldberg

To exorcize my demon, he licks
the edge of my widow’s peak

in the middle of a winter cotton field. His hot tongue
slurs ivory

goats of steam
from my forehead. They rise, sinuous
as scents of gin off the junipers—little

mouthfuls burning. He wants my
latest confession. I say, Fine
but no kiss—

only leather: muzzle, bit, collar to wrist,
wrist behind back, behind silver

spiked bodice. Do you mind if I enter

your dream? he asks. The one where the Holstein
is stung by barbed wire. She drags her blue
entrails smoking through the ginger grove. Do you mind

if I interpret? I gag him, grind my

red boot over breastbone. He dreams the smell of ginger root
cracked by the panicked

cow’s hooves, her scattered
blood-iron in the spear grass. Then, his breath
at the back of my neck, his glance

choke-chained, breathlessly

telepathic. My demon
stamps inside like a starved goat—black

hoof on my tongue,
its bitter eggplant. My lips
won’t hold long

their cloven shapes
or his song: Blue thistles

bloomed in cities. I can’t stop—
the story

going like the tongue goes:

lit and loosed, moving,
like Lucifer,
down.