SOPHIE KLAHR
HOUDINI DOG
While your attention riddles me like trick questions knit
into a hailstorm, I want to run from you less
than I want the grace in your pause than I want the blues
of your spine beneath my fingertips, a riff pushing my tongue
along the back of my teeth then the base of your cock then
the blood in my ears. Listen to it – that
pause when adrenaline
kicks, and you don’t move. Dog, you’re
a song that I run to,
another lap around the block in the Hot Dark; I dream of you lapping
the pale of me to spill; O Dog, you are sweat and a grave
look back at morning’s doorway, a dreaming
thing / a fever of thyself.
Houdini would hide copies of the same key all over his body
during any trick with a lock. You give me a copy of your apartment
keys but Dog, we cannot both go home at once. We say home,
meaning half a dozen places, overlapping by one. I should be more
careful and copy your way of touching just about everyone
to make everyone feel a little special. I should learn to be your type
of thief. Dog, there’s the problem of my moon face, how you entering
a room eclipses me all over. Tell me more about Houdini, I know
he was your hero as a child, when your father was alive,
when you believed in a magic that required no one else.