New Mexico Mercury

Man. Woman. Huddled. Crouched in a dark corner.
He hears scuttling roaches. Phantasmagoria. Demons. Pixies.
He hears Stygian depths downward.
“Listen carefully,” she says,
so gently, to calm a child in a schoolhouse of terrors
long before she purportedly stole from the apple tree.
Listening was the only advice she hoped to proffer
to the man surrounded by cave walls dripping.
He hears his heartsong systolic and diastolic,
strains of arterial sluices,
his lonely, rhythmic breathing.
Breathe. One pulse beat is irreducible.
Breathe. The cry of Adam
cleaved from the breath of One God is irreducible.
Before she can ask again: what, what is happening,
the tides of dark magic swelling like swamp pools,
each plop plop an animal of the polytheistic macabre
he has lost the nerve for many mysteries.
Listening is the seduction of mirrors, narcissism, and solitude.
He folds in upon himself like a lotus,
less attentive to a woman than the beginnings
of prayer.