The Tanner’s Bride

I move into the reek of tepid flesh, learn to scrape hides and on them needlepoint vines from cobwebs. Last night you touched me

with such attention I felt it would be wrong to move. Since you do not ask my secrets, I have stopped having them. Still I rebind

my journal in deer skin and run a finger down the spine. What last I wrote: Have my eyes becomeempty ant hills? Can kindness

be a kind of quartering? Curled around my knees on the wolf skin rug, I wish I could fit in its jaws. The rug hides

a trapdoor into the room where you stroke the limp haunch of a doe. Peeling her skin, you are quiet and engrossed.

Stretched out above, I dream of running through a forest of pelts, pursued. I come to a pool and bend over it to find

I am a hind with lacerations for eyes. Part of her always takes flight. Though your fist pounds the trap door, my body is a latch you can’t lift.