The Advantage of Sexual Cannibalism

I give a home to the black widow spider
so she can spin a web of strong silk thread
in peace, her webs like comfy beds to seduce
and then kill and devour her mate, to make the choice
to take him out or let him be. Do I want him
as a suitor or as a snack? And when an ex-lover
calls to say that I am pathologically
incapable of being honest with
him, I recall his fear that my darkest
corner was home to a lady in a shiny leather coat
and stilettos, a woman who, if coaxed with a hand
tender and a mouth patient, would surely turn
and face him without striking, expose
her belly and reveal that hourglass of yawning
red, his disbelief that I let them live
with me in the icy maw of that winter, those nights
when I would let him into my
bed but not into my body—

Oh sweetheart, you should know that you were never
someone I cared about enough
to take the time
to destroy.

 

From Antionette’s forthcoming chapbook God Damned Mouth, published by Grandma Moses Press.

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