Conjugal

Conjugal
By Russell Edson

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.

He is bending 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 the thing they do.

He is forming her into the wallpaper. He is 
smoothing her down into the flowers there. He is finding 
her nipples there. And he is kissing her pubis there.

He climbs into the wallpaper among the flowers. And 
his buttocks move in and out of the wall.