Infidel
       

Don't pretend you've got a corner on grave idols
or craven images. It's not your skin that succors,

it's the sneaky way your eyes crawl around
my Überfrau, like the orange silk or surreal feel

of transcendental sums giving in to gravity
or infection or the ingenious revolutionary—

our ten toes lying in a grave together, skin to skin.
Tell the Queen you wish to play with me and I bet

she'll vet you. I can't figure out the meaning
of what some call playing in the dark (what,

yin?) or whistling low because of pseudonyms
you've named yourself after. Now I nudge

junipers as they gnarl and ignore me, aka
you. The way we pretend to know the meaning

of stuff. The painstaking pain of it: One Missoula
two Missoula. T hrow yourself beneath a train.

This is the undisclosed story of an infidel
in the throes of her soul's infidelity. How she

wants all these stanzas to herself, doe-eyed
and bra be gone, how she threw her pink

spats and saddle shoes onto the toes of any old
beautiful believer she could find. Or, what

are the chances our ten toes will lie together
under a bed of petunias someday, playing footsies?

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Copyright © 2018 Maureen Seaton All rights reserved
from Fisher
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission