Her Big Snake

I can’t touch her without breaking skin,

fingertips, like magnets, make blood pool under flushed pores

until it bursts!

out of guilt-cuts from glances averted under a razor’s edge

and runs down your body like ribbons--

or maybe snakes.

I am overcome by a reptilian urge,

a desire tightly packed in a hidden corner

behind my lips, pinned shut with principles

because I will be damned

if a woman cant have a snake as big as any man’s.

What is that?

Up in the trees?

oh dear lord BIG SNAKE

She better run,

better watch out for fangs—oh no

too slow.

Now we’re stranded in the jungle.

Can she still see through cracks of furiously blinking eyes?

Can she feel the venom inside?

Feel it mix into her blood?

Is that why she grows so numb?

She will not answer me with words

just an expressive narrowing of the eyes with a sigh,

spasms in the mud.

Ha!

Oh God…

It was just empty skin all along

She molted and left me wrapped in paper scales

I succumbed to a poisonous sleep,

And dreamed of heels licked by forked tongues.

SM Apr-Jul 2010