Laying Down With Snakes

Lay down noiselessly, as long as you stay still and breathe lightly, then they will ignore you. You can smile under your eyelids, you can pretend that they have legs and wear business suits. You can imagine milking the poison out of their hollow fangs; like sperm it will ease your mind. In the viper pit let the forked tongue's sense your resignation, let the forked tongue's lick your meekness. Let the forked tongue's wrap you up in their sinuous dreams. On Monday morning they will be waiting to interrogate your presence, Their tight shiny pants dick slick and cocksure. Their pointing shoulder pads puffed up like rock adders, high hips sharp and akimbo pencil-sharp eyes probing, testing your capacity to still undulate. If you are male, screw red thorns upon your rodent parts. The mice around your spine are freezing, wrap them in fox skins you haggled for at the meat-market. Grin with your back teeth. If you are female, If you have hands, then hold them up, reveal your armpits, cream your pheromone-laced musk into their morning coffee. Loll with the water-cooler moccasins, laugh at their venomous jokes. Feed them scraps of velvety rabbit skin you have shaved off your inner thighs. Wear your skirt just a little bit higher. At the end of the work day, if your eyes are filled with dried-up slime remove the crud with a cattle-prod then slither into a deep sleep. Dream of eating the juicy white meat of roasted pythons, or disemboweling a writhing nest of Anacondas with a razor-sharp, steely forked tongue. .