I have been fortunate enough to have been married to two of the nicest men in the world, my late first husband and my current husband, but before and between them, I had the most lamentable taste in men. I blame it on all the reading I did as a child. The bad boys were always the most interesting guys.
All this may explain why, over the years, I've written such a number of Coyote poems, and why they seem to form a narrative arc.
APPOINTMENT
WITH COYOTE
Coyote
showers, shaves, slathers musk
when he
knows he will see her. On Wednesdays,
ten is a
sacred hour.
He always
wears something new
when she
comes for her appointment
to see if
she will notice.
Nights fill
with Wednesday
morning
dreams,
but the
empty days go on—
all but
hers, when he becomes
for fifty
minutes
strange,
compelling
beast,
sexual being.
Coyote sees
it in her eyes, the way she draws
unconsciously
near, the sudden aware
jerk
backwards
that must
have been the apple’s
consequence
in Eden.
The things
he could make her feel, she fears.
This
morning her old car refuses
to start.
Coyote drives her home,
thighs one
hand apart. Filling the air
with her
fragrance, she pretends
nothing
joins them. Coyote fears
losing
control in the sleet
and sliding
into some fiery collision
before he
reaches her door,
then races
skidding away in the ice.
Tomorrow,
her husband will buy her a battery.
Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia
Chucha Press, 2009)
