crimson lights swimming in cocktail glasses, hors d’oeuvres
             carved into roses, orange
poppies blooming in gin.

Guests swarm about, claws unretracted. Frauleins’
             necklines plunge
like knives.

Men’s mouths are so wet from hunger,
             their eyeteeth reflect my lips.
Their tongues are all sugared but yours.

You are not so young, nor so good-looking,
             yet I listen only to you.
All the stories you tell me are knots.

How simple they seem at first!
             But the more I try to untie them,
the more tightly they bind me to you.

Your humor is as black
             as the leather on your back, but I know
it isn’t all guile. You mock the world

because you love it,
             a love unrequited,
and unreturned.

In dreams, there are no transitions, only
             ellipses, splices in film. I
am alone with you.

I sit on your lap in your black leather chair,
             my white slip fluttering, flag
of surrender.

You hold out a drug,
             a circling blue, flickering light, a cold kind of blue,
like a star.

This urgency sears through my veins—
             emergency happiness—sweating and cold—
peels off my clothes—press my flesh to yours

as though I am fevered, and you are a pane
             of glass. My bones
seem to dissolve. Into your body

I fall, and sleep. My dreams
             are warm,
and green.