From WHY THINGS BURN Copyright © 2002 Daphne Gottlieb. Used by permission of Soft Skull Press, Inc.
She’s
kinky,
and she’s
given up dating.
She’s fallen in love and
given up
dating and
her whips
as youthful
foolishness.
Her chaps are gathering dust in the closet
and her corset sits like an empty saddle
after the horse has left or run
away, or been flogged to death.
He’s not like
the others.
He’s a very special
man, she says.
I’m glad he makes you
so happy, I tell her.
He treats me so well,
she says.
The weekend I visited,
he was hunting deer
with his father.
It’s okay, she tells me.
He eats what he kills.
Okay.
It’s like that sometimes,
I guess.
Maybe something is only yours
when you can do as you please with it
since now, she has
no need
for the ridiculous literal
liturgy of S&M—
no more dress-up.
No make-believe.
All the black leather
she needs
is the E-Z boy recliner
where her love is parked
with one of his hands wrapped around a remote,
the other, a bottle of beer.
She’s right. It’s kinky,
the way he doesn’t look away
from the TV,
as her head bobs
in his lap
like a fisherman’s float
on a nature program,
hectic
with the pace
his breath sets.
His crotch swells
under her mouth’s
prowess. He’s such
a sweetheart
he waits
until the
commercials
to come.
