I hate the miracle of my anatomy!
Cried the woman-poet from the
bed

the man slipping silently off her
while in the next room
the dogs howled at a
television nature-show.

That night he had
called her brood-mare,
took her to pasture,
tied her to a post and shot her

and now he reclines
all broad shoulders, white
chest and body hair, smug in animal
satisfaction, one with the dogs
in the living room.

She covers the flood-plains
of her hips with blankets
and prays that his
hooks didn't catch,
feeling like a basin collecting
groundwater as it flows off the
mountain face.