A bedtime story about Bluebeard
all the wives on meat hooks
then wake up
and the house is dark.

Fear
is a gift from mother —
the way she grabbed
our collar bones, said:

get inside. We had the house
to ourselves, kept our eyes
glued to the television set.
Our hearts

we put in the ice box
not like psychopaths but like poets
to preserve the crimson imagery
the slender metaphor

of love and its chambers.
In the middle of the night
we open the door, and the light goes on
when we're so hungry

and the cold red beating
is all there is to eat.