bitch

Erintrude Pieta
Outback the woodshed,
  silos stacked inside the sky,
burrowing for some winter.

Fog, a thick persian runner
  on the foyer of the forest, rolling
and suffocating the hills

as a wild dog gnaws
  through a deer carcass
with just his front teeth,

stopping bite only
  to nudge the few fat bits
to the hard ground.

My love
  looks like
this. 

And there's nothing 
  for me to do except howl 
until a bad woman hears:

a woman who will never ask
  why I don't call, who doesn't
call either, 

pooling drool in the pockets 
  of my mouth, leave me slobbering, 
sniffing for one taste

and kicking me off couch
  with just a heel because she knows
go fetch is more fun.

I dream of a lover and I
  moving from room to room
noses to the ground,

hunting each other
  for the sport 
of dimension:

How much 
  is too much?
It's true

I need a bad woman
  with a cat tail tied to one paw
and a bowknife balanced

on her head, a fat mouth
  so I know before the first snarl
that she'll tear my organs

and spit blood,
  easy, back into the sink basin. 
I need a bad woman. 

I need a hound.

Erintrude Pieta lives in North Carolina. Her work can be found in storySouth, Fourteen Hills, and The Sierra Nevada Review.