Lothar’s Wife

he’s only a smart-ass when he’s home with Mandrake he’s silent and obedient as a snail his bald pate bowing into the cape’s trail and dreaming of tales he’ll bore me with his one night home once a month that’s what I get like clockwork and always on the full moon half my allowance he reserves for sheets, tearing them with his teeth to vent the forced silence of those other twenty-odd days did I say odd it’s that one day that’s odd his coming home full of half-tricks he’s picked up from the master the hypnotic hunger he so willingly tries on me he claims he stole me, bought me claims he’s Zulu, Bantu, Beja depending on the hour, day, or year says I was the black spot in the white of his eye the speck he turned into leopard that unwittingly turned into woman neither of us no longer knows what’s real and my mother beats her fat tongue against her gums as each month I try to reveal the puzzle stroking the lines from his hairless obsidian crown I hear her rumbling around in the next room I soothe his sweet head and she moans heaven protect us from all the things to which we can become accustomed