when he asks me to talk dirty
       

he says this is a room where bad girls live
and i say of which persuasion and he says
the soft kind, elbows without rust. outside,
rocking chairs have blown facefirst into
the grass, fistfuls of wheat. he says i have
had a talking-to. how the hair as a tendril
is a looser fastening, is a line of fire. i'm
collecting eye-blinks and pouts, nodding
along. and the limbs, plucked as weeds.
he says second to none, teeth near my ear,
gravel-tongued. i say first-world. he says
misbehave, won't you and the rope is flung,
being dragged out. it drags on, i am wearing
tightropes and kite-tails, swimming the end,
and tomorrow in the mud-ridden mound
i will watch the snow end itself as a corpse
acquiring blood. i am seeing already the
righting of this, rearranging the cushions,
and he is close, though no closer.

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Copyright © 2019 Mackenzie Kozak All rights reserved
from Denver Quarterly
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission