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If This Poem Were Hannibal Lecter
 
would it whisper like its namesake
sotto voce so that you must lean 
forward towards the page to its conceit, 
only to pull back with such force, 
that when your chair capsizes 
you land and snap your spine?
 
Maybe, just maybe it would take
an interest in you and ask you
about that time when you were five 
and smirk as you describe the sound 
your sister's tibia made as it fractured 
under your added weight after 
you pushed her out of the apple tree.
 
Most likely, it would get up
from the night-table where you left
the poem unattended and steal 
down the stairs into the bathroom
as you bathed, lop off your ear
with carotid incision, prepare to eat it
with some fava beans cooked in a skillet 
and inform you as you convulsed 
that you lost your sense of the poetic vein.

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