II. Domovoi Peeping at the Sleeping Merchant Wife
wife you lie, wife, in the moon-(merged
yellowgreens)light of clockradio, my Kustodiev’s
merchant wife, you lie nude, from wide
hips from waves of sheet curved
up emerges you, submerged, wife, in Decem-
berslumber, your icy skin, you wife, you rescind
to waist and up again, a swell of breasts to go to when
newly incubated babe is born.
............................................my wife, you lie, i’ve eyed
you, Beauty you, Venus you naked goddess of Russ-
ian painters you—
.......beside you i, hirsute, stand, your domovoi,
our baby boy buoyed up inside the hush
around you, this is how, this house’s spirit, i
have found you when from out that slumber (clockradio has sheared it) i
waded, i breathed shallow, i made not a noise.
Danny Pelletier teaches writing in central New York (state, not city). His work can be found at Monkeybicycle, qarrtsiluni, contemporary haibun, and One Forty Fiction.
