Wolf

It was the second time we met, I met him

at the airport following the first days' frenzied contact,

got a drink while I waited, light with hunger, curated

to look uncurated, light to look at and to feel,

glass in hand, I saw my wrists as set apart, fish bones

to be snapped and licked, I thought of his teeth,

the wolf-grin, couldn't think of any words, could

only see teeth bared beneath blazing eyes, bared

upon consideration of eating, to eat or not to eat,

he could take it or leave it, he'd rather smoke

than eat, but perhaps, now,

he would eat with me.

He came in a long wrung-out greasy animal to

where I hung loosened in attendance, when we

kissed I tasted fish and hunger, as though he had

swum an ocean of sex, he was older and prolific,

the bodies behind him were an ocean of bodies, and

now he hungered for my youth, thrilled

and primed and terrified.

We did not eat that night. He said he had already eaten,

drove us back to his apartment, from last time to

this time, from eating with eyes and tongues to

his private mealtime, fruition of bodies, impalement

of youth, whereafter he remarked -

“I ought to be getting you home now.”

I gathered my things silently sat beside him in his car

silently tunnelling down the spine of night, Dudelange

to Strassen, silently I rehearsed my final line until

I said it on my doorstep -

Why would you sleep with someone you would not

sleep beside

- in steadily unfazed wonder

at the total lack of manners, the insult to my sex.

And he protested the sanctity of space denied him as

a beaten child, he apologised, I nodded and I shut

my door shut him out for three whole days until

I let him in

and he took me to a place a picnic

spot upon the hill, he had champagne

and a toothbrush, wrapped up.

I let him in. I would procure his weakness. He gave it

freely, a magnificent show, a wolf in chains

pleading for my favour.

It was a month of picnics

punctured by a sudden flare that

came to bear on nothing, nothing

(but a nightmare in which he

found me wanting in youth. Defenestrated

from his brothel, I awakened on the pavement

in a pool of revolutionary blood)

but an ache, nothing

that would hold me there.

I stumbled onwards. I stumbled

out of his apartment into a bottle

at some point into a door

and then onwards into 

the rest of my life.

Reviews

[John Alexander McFadyen]

Your poetry has real edge and real life written all over it. This is a sublime depiction to being picked up by someone used to playing the field and the feelings this lefdt you with as you bravely tried to regain your dignity.