Wilhelmina looks sick in the light

Wilhelmina smokes cigarettes at a bus stop
between dope-dried ex-beauty queen in pajamas
and secret agent student of chemistry shifty behind his newspaper

Wilhelmina hides in Harlem, behind wet glass
watching red water suck down into sidewalk drains

She has these invisible heirloom knives
slippery when wet
that whisper right through all metal detectors
A sure winner with the jury

Wilhelmina clucks down the echoey hallway in hurried heels
late like white rabbit
like either one of the hepburns
clumsy in her grace

The door opens to racks and chains and crosses
to another he's no dracula but he'll do,
he'll do,
she's seen him several times and he is rarely kind
except in the clean way he jerks the leash and the way he
lets flutter a few twenties when it's over

Wilhelmina clenches her teeth to keep from crooning wordless while he strokes her hair
while his thumbs press her throat, her skin to unbuckle

He smokes at her, takes away her dress
He puts her kneeling
He makes her press her lips - like you mean it, slut - to the top of his foot
hits her shoulders with a whip heavy as history
He makes her
choose to submit but she scowls at herself when he cannot see her face

Mouth broken open /  datum sorting to stay awake
last orgasm logged one month and one day ago in sterile cold hospice bed
it had had teeth like a tsunami, had come unannounced and unwelcome to terror-quake her out of mad mad dreams
of what? of what?

From behind he hauls her up by dog chain, hands bound at her back,
shoulder blades wedged into his thighs.
She reminds him, he says, of Kipling's whole universe,

Wilhelmina bathes in a soup pot
until her skin drops off the bone for him
Wilhelmina keeps her eyes on the floor
to avoid accidental contact with her own reflection
while she is not at all thinking of you.

Wilhelmina might have been purring
somewhere below the whip roar of flagellation

She might have tumbled voluntary and with frightful zest
back down gopher hole of electric concentric rings
but for barely mended ankles and
post-orgasmic stress disorder

in a state of ecstasy not remotely sexual in origin
the patient was found hyperventilating
was found broadcast in a compromising state
radiant with post fuck shudders
clutching skull and babbling tearful how beautiful how beautiful
the beauty

Wilhelmina is bored of hacking scar tissue

Wilhelmina hurts

Wilhelmina is perilous pent-up quivering after he goes
safely clothed, watching her cigarettes tremble in the glass
making eyebrows at herself
refusing petulantly to fall
in line with the baser instincts
of a sick sick fucking sick pet monkey

Wilhelmina shudders in the rain,
a hand pressed over her mouth
from midtown to chinatown

Wilhelmina smokes long distance at the bus stop
between scour voiced pajama woman
asking always for a light