Spooked

Somber leaves hiss in the night wind,

dark mounds conspiring.

Gaping spaces in tooth-torn trees
become mouths in silent screams.

Distant light falters, obscured
by clawed hands of weaving limbs.

With fierce-nugget eyes cats
slink by, brush my skin--

it shudders the length of fear,
hairs probing the air for omens.

One foot marks the porch edge--
inches to safety or the last walk.

Terror lies taut, eyeless, inward.
Beast knows where the knives keep.

Mary Bast, Time Warp


 

Union

It was his gaze that held me fast
on the sea's edge in Scotland
when the sun crashed.
"American?" he asked, sidling.
He wished me harm.

I'd backed toward just this,
his cable-sweatered arm,
his Scottish brogue, his eyes.
He stroked my vanity
and wished me harm.

We walked, how foolishly for me,
away from all the drowning fires
the families laughing, in the cooling
hush. Then premonition--
belly first, bile rising.

I taste it as I kill him with this
memory, won't have it be:
my young wrists held back,
his pushing, breaking,
coldly remonstrating, Quiet!

Now I kick, gouge,
hear myself not beg, not
bound in dark union,
have it not true I did not
kill him. A belated dirge.

(An earlier version of this poem is in my collection, Time Warp, 2015; an essay about the rape appears in one of my other blogs.)