Locksmith

What hell these legs maneuvered in fog

of muscle, stretched and snowy. Your friendless wing

made time for its own paralysis

and each pore surged lightning, the beating it earned.

The whines of so many spiderlings

nascent and drowsy in aureolin gauze

became the tide of this trick. Fondly

I devoured my mate in the nursery

drinking first from his terrified heart

until I’d sucked the rest, sparing just a shell

strung up, a bogeyman, a cuckold.

Did you come for the corpse or the golden strands?

Simply you flew from the underbrush,

arboreal beast who quit his home and song

to be bit. Your neck carved immobile

and I bit. The eyes bulged and the jaws split wide.

Where was the low rumble of toxins

filling tissue, stiffening like lock and key

rusted together? Not a whistle

from you, cadaver. Left now to wild molting

and dangling Christ-like. The widest chest

bit and stuffed silent with the brightest sawdust.

The moon’s white progeny opened up

in the dead fallow, hale and rapt in the gilt.