Russell Edson

Conjugal

A man is bending his wife.
He is bending her around something that she has bent
herself around.
She is around it, bent as he has bent her.

He is convincing her.
It is all so private between them.

He bends her around the bedpost.
No, he is bending her around the tripod of his camera.
It is as if he teaches her to swim
as if he teaches acrobatics
as if he could form her into something wet
that he delivers out of one life into another.

And it is such a private thing they do.

He is forming her into the wallpaper
he is smoothing her down into the flowers there
and he is kissing her pubis.

He is climbing into the wallpaper among the flowers
his buttocks moves in and out of the wall.