Today's poem is by Laurie Blauner

Would I Do Anything for You?
       

I work as a vet assistant at the Exotic Animal Hospital where I've seen lizards licking soda, a snake petulantly swallow a fawn, an obscene marmot trill for cookies, a possum that wants to crawl out of its skin, and an axolotl, a Mexican salamander, which is a walking fish with a pink balloon face and blue button eyes. I'm a human skin cake who has stayed out of trouble her whole life. In my mind I'm often crossing a field, a tourist in the wilderness, instead of clattering metal instruments over a feathered or furry body. It's one paw at a time. I empty myself. Then I fill with animal presence. The human world is all heists and murders, politics and money, and men I've casually loved, cars that heave me somewhere before breaking loose, houses and apartments that rear up, towering over everything that's left. I have been fierce, but I've never seen anything like the bull-headed man who came to the clinic because he had broken his tail. He was taciturn, kind, not clingy, a fabulous listener that no woman could resist.

I patched him.

He healed.

In my bed a hoof grazes my cheek and my hand caresses a slightly curved horn. I'm dreaming, aren't I? I'm in a maze called the Labyrinth, searching for my newly beloved. There's nothing behind me, everyone I want ahead. I'm trying to remember how to use my hands. Passages veer left and then right, right and then backwards. Flies are urging me onward. The walls flinch when I touch them, but not enough to see over them. Stars are above me, but they are unnavigable. The city falls behind. I turn, expecting desire at the end. Instead, a new kind of animal rises up inside of me. But it's just me, with my new cow face, my splotched hide, my impatient little ears.

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Copyright © 2023 Laurie Blauner All rights reserved
from Come Closer
The Bitter Oleander Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission