ANNA JOURNEY
Letter to the City Bayou by Its Sign: Beware Alligators
Pimp’s-hat shadows in the feathery date palm. Everything,
I think, at this illegal
hour in the public park has
a half-drunk gait. Dear slow, dark water, why hesitate
like an older man’s hand on my thigh? I’m not sixteen and I’m
gin-brave since hopping the cyclone fence. Are you near
starved for my face in the water? Dear clear, single rose
that blooms in toxic bubbles
from your surface. Dear black bayou, once, by a river
I bit a man’s neck. His scent: the raw
teak air husked inside stomachs of six
Russian nesting dolls—the ones in the attic I pulled
apart and open. The ones I
pulled apart and open like Styrofoam cups
stacked in your red clay banks. Though I’m not
Russian, I can last all night
in an icy wind in nothing
but beggar’s rags, or my blue bikini. I’m made
of so many girls I can’t get them all
drunk at once or they’d mutiny. Dear underworld, I’ll sit here
all night with my selves jumping out
like gin from my tipped cup. You’ll catch us one
by one. We’ll lie in your hot shallows and, with our
dark smiles, raise your pulse. 
Contributor’s
notes
Clockwork Erotica: Why He Takes Off His Glasses
When Telekinesis Fails 
Elegy: I Pass by the Erotic Bakery
He Has Given His Face to the Waters of the Lake
Night with Eros in the Story of Leather (2)
The Mirror's Lake Is Forever
Introductions: A Reading Loop
Tracking the Muse | Everyone Needs A Little Thanatos