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—

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

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.