When I tell her my lies,
her carnivorous mouth
gobbles my words like flies
in the air between us -

I am afraid of the thrust
of her sword, the tension
in her bow, the giant atavism
of the sacrificed breast in that angry head.

I love her
the way she doesn't believe me.

I love her finger
pushing again and again
into her ring;
an eight-letter word swings
round and round
the edge of her scrabble playing mind:
she just can't place it.

Her fingertip tickles
the underbelly of my imagination,
and she can't face it.

I asked Plath whether,
in bed, with Ted,
she worshipped the owl or the totem pole.
"With whom?" she said.
She brayed like a man in a nightclub.

A golden boy helps.
A golden boy doesn't help.

A Nazi big shot bangs away in the poetry of love.