June 2012 — Carnivoyeur

She returned home after a night of excess
her eyes red and her vision scarlet.
She’d had too many stars
the Perseids flying like shattered china
in the midst of a polyamorous domestic dispute
and picked too many locks
her tongue to each keyhole
to learn the mechanism
and wandered too many dark, dusty shops
fingering antique linens and caressing
fox heads and furs, their stories given up
in microscopic fleurs of pollen and dander.
She’d relished too much musk
from ghosts of colognes stuck in old glass bottles
and whale-oil lamps greased with history
and manufactured potions, the modern mantles
men and women wear to shroud
sweet-salt sex.
She’d skimmed too many crowds
stealing leather wallets and lace chokers
black rubber bracelets and locks of hair–
undyed, unstyled, increasingly rare–
while trading wary glances, thready breaths,
stroking pulses back to quarter-time
and drunk way too much wine
gulped in alleys where rat-scratch symphonies
scraped mortar and echoed off trash cans,
where she savored the archaeology of odors:
ammonia and human ordure merging now
with metal, tinged synthetically sweet
by plastics doomed to be their own descendants.
Thus she returned home debauched
her eyes red and surfeit singing in her head
to adore her latest pet, asleep in bed.
She traced the scarlet profile and whispered promises
she’d soon forget.