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How can they think they are fully themselves
When this animal inhabits their marriage, homes
In across morning toward a rustle of clothes,
Until all their edges glisten? She tucks back
Its tongue, he clamps down to see what hurts
The animal shakes off their shadows. A last
Brightness flashes and the head won't have it.
Their house tips on gray brims of the bay,
But not again until later, when the brute winds up
Hardly present, breath its only evidence.
Now marriage hears it as mechanism and spins
In deaf sleep, each part handling the other
With motions, as if a creature's at clatter
Inside, levering each hole. Just knowing that
The two are there makes leaving difficult.
That's the conscious part, but instinct also
Takes hold. The couple remembers once hosting
A stranger to whom they served familiar food.
All was refused. The animal hoards a silver apple.

 

the
animal

barton
allen