Northwood. Maryse Meijer

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      you’d let one eat you right up—

      NIGHT SONG

      You brought batteries for the radio.

      We danced close, the way we couldn’t at the dance hall,

      your cock against my thigh.

      We danced those batteries out.

      I took them, spent, when I left,

      Bobby Hatfield’s sad falsetto

      ringing through the copper caps.

      Candles quivering against the glass, our shadows

      hovering above our heads I will never forget

      the spider’s egg opening in the corner, her babies

      spilling across the wall as you dug your chin into my neck.

      Walking through song after song.

      The thing is, you were soft.

      The white of a barely cooked egg, the glistening

      edge of it, how it trembles on metal.

      You kept falling in love.

      The spiders

      found the cracks, made new nests. They ate

      the ants. And the radio sat on the shelf

      above the little blackened pan with its scrawny omelets

      and said nothing.

      DAPHNE

      Her back against me catching her

      deep breaths. Naked she was smooth as pith

      hair caught in a branch I pulled it free.

      The women kneel at the root I watch.

      How determined they are to bleed. Apollo’s gold eyes

      didn’t dazzle me I

      prefer the stream she opens her book and learns her trees

      the flies are heavy this time of year she

      combs them from her

      bangs at night she’s thinking more and more

      how to

      escape it should she escape

      where’s your daddy I asked

      isn’t he a god

      CELL

      It worked

      sometimes. Blue light in the dark

      and your name in black

      on the screen hardly ever

      showing up. You didn’t need

      to call: when you came

      I was here.

      Every time. Unerring this sense

      of pussy and where

      to find it.

      Strung up in the smokehouse or waiting their turn beneath

      the ice—

      you know where the bodies are.

      You put them there.

      SHOPPING LIST

      In the market fingering a box of tea I heard you laugh

      two aisles over. My hand froze on the plastic; there was a

      woman’s voice, laughing with you. I pressed against the

      metal shelf, coat buttons tapping the cereal boxes below.

      Who knew me here, I wondered, was I still a stranger, a

      woman shivering against the Liptons? On the edge of the

      wood it was especially dangerous: the one road with its strip

      of shops, the bar, the dance hall, the gas station, the Feed

      and СКАЧАТЬ