There’s only one place where God cannot find me.

God with his hooves on, God with his horns

 

come to force me back on my knees with his love.

Fear abandons me at the sight of her with a black wig

 

and a belt in her hand. Her bare ass is obscene

and beautiful and struck by moonlight. She knows

 

the body’s ambition to be all sweat and flush and rapture.

I suffer her mouth, hold the sweet disorder of red hair

 

in my fists. She keeps my secret—the itch in my back

that wants to be wings. I accept the water offered

 

and the collar chained to the floor. Pain matters.

Light creeping through the window matters.

 

Images of unsuccessful saints taped over the cracks

in the wall watch, jealous, as she whips me around the room.

 

Rent, ripped asunder, every part of me awake to the stranger

mercies, her kiss as distant as the heaven that refuses me.

 

 

Stop digging up the dead. My daughter disappeared decades ago; you can’t have her. I know the rumors are true because when my husband came home and told me he’d buried her in the jungle, my master arrived inside me. He started calling me to the river, but he wouldn’t come to shore and he knows I can’t swim. I remember how dark the mud will be at the bottom. I remember how sinister his smile will be when he comes for me some day. No one here knows about the nephilim or my daughter’s strange birth. You must tell no one. I don’t even know who told you, but I will tell you this—I dreamt I made a blade of pirarucu scales and split you from sternum to navel. I kissed you as I pulled out your guts and went to wash them in the river. When I came back, your body was gone. I wept and wore your intestines like a wet shawl. Little One, do not think you can fuck with me and live. I have sent my beloved, armed with lust, to your side of the river. His mouth is unclean and holy. Nothing hurts as much as his love.