In the corner of the room, he stands, a poised spit, a painted pillar, in the air of being elsewhere. Maybe tonight he has covered himself in passionflower vine. His fragrance fills the room. My eyes are on him. He lives in the back of my head, and deep in my loins. I balance the railroad tracks' steel beam, walk its meander alongside the curves of slow-roiling Platte River and her muted bluffs. Today he is an oblate in a monastery of his own making — Oblatus, one offered up My host, let me eat of the body. From the bottom of his basket, beneath the periodic burst of flame, the gaseous inflations of his hot air balloon, I dangle from the tether-rope. He must know I’m here. On the ground, strangers point, cover their mouths. In his dapper, clubman's style, he leads me on a leash and willingly, I go, stumble in debris, avoid backlashed switches through which I can barely make my way. His abstruse accessories attract me even though he’s sentimental, selfish, pernicious. An obnoxious man. My obsequiousness irritates him. He walks faster, and I blur the point. Inarticulate the details I observe. He speaks with incomprehensible pretension. Tonight he wears satin underwear laced slightly in patchouli from a soap one of his sisters gives him. I touch the smell, drink his milky silk, the words come slowly. He drapes his shirts on the backs of my chairs. His dander litters my brush. He blows his horn in my ears. A tease, a boy, that contagion he thrusts, eats into my gut. Reprinted with permission Copyright © 2006 by Denise Banker

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