The Wedding Night


My husband walks in, his hand
on the back of a fox, kicking

the door shut behind him with his heel,
and he says.  Staring at my neck

with the eyes of Mary after she found
the lamb.  As he fingers his long braid,
smelling of jasmine and bone dust.  

My husband says.  

My husband with the crooked crown,
with the half-seeing eye.  
With the thumb that wanders while he sleeps.  

My husband limps to the fireplace,
trailed by the bespectacled dog and bear;

my husband lifts the lid. To the murmuring,
bubbling, black-bellied pot.  The pot says,

get your filthy feet off my new red carpet,
before my husband.

Tips the bitter soup into the fire.  As the fire dies,
cursing and spitting.

He says, Don't.  My husband says, Don't let
your fairytales get in the way of my mouth.