BAR TRAPPING

There are some people whose eyes will devour you. 

In a single blink, I flee your cages and take refuge 

 

in swamps until my skin slicks with loam. I 

slip through the crack in the door 

 

of your body. With eyes as gentle as broth, I am the killer

whose flat-laid palm against your mouth 

 

with its muddy chiaroscuro of fingers 

will thumbprint your breath with salt. Gleaming 

 

in the dim-lit bar—Naugahyde stools split into gaping

smiles, shotguns anointed with hops—

 

I stalk you with my infant’s claws. 

You count the lights and animal heads above the bar top.

 

When I bite into the nape of your neck,

will you miss the pink underskin 

 

you stole from the blade of your skinning knife?

Or will my down hairs—wet, trembling,  

 

and precocial—remind you of why you loved me enough

to spear me through my belly

 

and bring me home to your body? You shook

salt over me as if onto the meal I had become. 

 

My tender butcher will know 

that the price of escape is retribution. 

 

As I spring from the smoky shadows of the bar

where I have sniffed you out at last 

 

and fetter your throat with my jaw, you will gasp and topple 

like a felled buck among the stools and lights, 

 

and your pelt will warm my bed forever.