Spider Night

Dunedin glittering as a red-hot disco ball  

and your eyes like a predator sunset. That night,  

stuck to each other under floral sheets,  

 

you slap an itch on your neck  

that by lamplight turns into a spider  

the mysterious, bulbous contents of its abdomen  

smeared across your skin.  

 

The air is as still as the cold war  

as two world leaders pretending not to eye each other  

as their hands hover over nuclear buttons.  

 

I sweep up the streetlights  

like white-hot shards of glass—scatter them  

in the air over you, still spider-streaked.  

 

The air becomes fractals, cool, and you  

are in glittering snow—it's a white wedding,  

ours, and the priest in Christmastide vestments  

like a glowing monstrance.  

 

The cathedral is made of sequins,  

every saint decked out in stalacmites  

and glowworms.   

 

I think these things, you know.  

This is how I see you—wiping at your neck  

while behind you in the window the city stretches out  

 

like a cat made of jewels.