Abi Curtis
Lion-tamer
I wear a white suit:
skin-tight, rhine-stoned.
The audience always gasp:
imagining he attacks me,
raising red muscles to a human-stand.
But it is love that trembles over,
its claws steadying my small shoulders.
I wear a white suit:
so his passion is invisible,
my scars, covered.
Yes, I’ve come close enough –
in the past they’ve turned and ravaged me,
finding themselves back in that never-known dust,
lusty for munch of bone and suck of silk.
My white suit should be barred with black.
I love him more than any man.
At night I rest my head and hands
in his dangerous halo,
breathing the musk of blood and dung.
Every evening after the come-in,
after the slap of the switch,
when the sloping prowl begins,
He eyes me up,
then the white lines that remember him
ache to be reopened.
skin-tight, rhine-stoned.
The audience always gasp:
imagining he attacks me,
raising red muscles to a human-stand.
But it is love that trembles over,
its claws steadying my small shoulders.
I wear a white suit:
so his passion is invisible,
my scars, covered.
Yes, I’ve come close enough –
in the past they’ve turned and ravaged me,
finding themselves back in that never-known dust,
lusty for munch of bone and suck of silk.
My white suit should be barred with black.
I love him more than any man.
At night I rest my head and hands
in his dangerous halo,
breathing the musk of blood and dung.
Every evening after the come-in,
after the slap of the switch,
when the sloping prowl begins,
He eyes me up,
then the white lines that remember him
ache to be reopened.
Abi Curtis was born in 1979 and lives in Brighton. She was an Eric Gregory winner in 2004 and is currently completing a PhD in creative and critical writing at the University of Sussex.
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