| STEPHANIE LENOX |
| The Heart That Lies Outside the Body | |
| 2007 |
Tom
Leppard (UK) has approximately 99.9% of his body covered in tattoos …a leopard-skin
design….Tom now lives as a hermit on the Isle of Skye. —Guinness World Records |
Making
Love to Leopard Man
Though I’m not a needle, let me touch you.
Let me
look into the pink secret of your ear.
Let me part, one by one, your reclusive,
unmarked toes.
Trust me, you are not the first man I’ve known
who thought
he was an animal, who’s sharpened
his claws without knowing what to do with
them.
Like continents, your bruise-green spots drift apart.
Lying beside
you, I watch the ink bleed slowly
into the tiny channels of skin, edges blurring
into
your yellow sea. One-hundred-six islands
I’ve counted so far: that one looks
like a storm cloud,
that one at your hip like the head of a woman.
You’re
not the only one who knows how to make
the body an elaborate disguise. How
I wish
the children who torment you would throw stones
at the ugly hut
of my life and scatter like birds
when I glare at them. I want to bathe my
scars
in the isle's dirty river. I want fangs.
Let me show you how hermit
crabs do it: tap
my borrowed shell until I uncurl like a raw finger,
exposing
myself to salt. Out there, I could be eaten,
I could be carried by the current
into the mouth
of prey. Hold me closer with your human claws.
For now, let’s
pretend we have nothing to hide.
2007
Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Contest winner,
Stephanie Lenox, will read with
Denise Duhamel
on Sunday, March 30, 2008 at the Writers’ Center.
She will also read on Monday, March 31 at the
Cornelia Street
Cafe with 2006 winner Mary Kaiser
and 2005 winner Sean Nevin.