Unmasking

Sandi Leibowitz

Never say you minded

Never say you didn’t guess
          it was my quickening inside her 
          that made verses fly from her lips 
          like frosty breath up to the winter stars

Do not lie that you preferred 
the pale girl hiding behind night-black hair
too shy to ask for kisses
          to sly me who never asked
          just took them

Foxes are thieves by nature;
I can’t be blamed for stealing your heart

Never say that under 
the gleaming egg of the full moon
          you did not spy my true self,
          glimpse eyes of golden smoke,
          fur red as sunset nuzzling autumn maples,
          hear the snap of fine sharp teeth
          each time I nipped your nape in play

Unmask yourself as well,
my three-season husband,
and confess:

          you’d readily exchange my snarls
          for her most precious compliments,
          my barks of joy for her submissive mews,
          would sooner chase me through sweet-scented grass
          than catch her in your kitchen

Kitsune are not keen on winter leavings
We crave love fresh,
still squirming like a live hen in the jaws
With the flick of nine snow-tipped tails
I leave you

I will not say
that I’ll forget you 

Sandi Leibowitz, a New Yorker by birth and choice, wears many masks and many hats (one is kangaroo and one is zebra), including musician, school librarian and author of speculative fiction and poetry. Her works appear in magazines such as Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, Apex and Luna Station Quarterly. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. She has a story published in Metastasis, an anthology of speculative fiction and poetry about cancer, edited by Rhonda Parrish, and one of her poems was chosen by Ellen Datlow for inclusion in Best Horror of the Year 5.

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