Babayaga

over the years that mankind’s mischief almost never amazed her. She had watched brilliant financial virtuosos ensnared in the intricate nets of their own weaving, and charismatic politicians impaled by the bloody revolutions their own rhetoric had sparked; there had been double spies shot at dawn and duplicitous dauphins poisoned at dinner, but she rarely came across anything as oddly convoluted as what this poor Will was enmeshed in. It amused her how, in an almost endearing fashion, he had fallen into it with a guileless innocence, reminding her again of a rabbit, dashing across a hunter’s field, bewildered by all the buckshot flying about. As he kept talking in their little drunken corner, the details continued to confuse her, but she knew she could sort them out once she had a clear head. There were other matters to attend to first. She pushed the bottle out of their way and leaned her dizzy forehead up against a wobbly Will’s. “I think we need a taxi now.”
    She was upon him the minute they were in the back of the cab, barely pausing to let him tell the driver “ numéro vingt-quatre rue d’Artois. ” Then her lips were on his. Immediately he surprised her, for she liked the way he kissed, like a man who wanted to swallow life. He pulled her tight in his arms, his hands grabbing up the length of her nylons. His desire was clear, but also his pressing need for some concrete thing to ground him amid all his current confusion. His left hand held her thigh, his right hand pulled her waist close against his. She smelled the soap in his hair as she bit at his ear while pushing hard against his body. He grabbed her face and pulled her lips against his mouth, the force of his action surprising her again, releasing an instinct in her that yearned for a kiss that could devour him too. It felt bestial, like the statues of the lions in the Tuileries gardens, attacking one another with a mutual muscular ferocity. She paused to catch her breath and pressed her palm against his chest. He was breathing hard too, his eyes wide, seemingly stunned and thrilled at this sudden encounter. You poor Americans, she thought, you will never learn to drink like Russians.
    A little over an hour later she lay naked in Will’s bed. She felt a soreness on her shoulder where Will had gripped her hard and she was bruised on her hip from where their bodies had collided. Yes, she thought, this is one reason I always come back to these beds, because intimacy changes the scale of the universe, folding down the vast and overwhelming horizon until there is only the small world that is my body, upon which toothsome storms, sweating floods, and soulful earthquakes break their mighty forces, and I lie ravaged and raw and blissfully alive. She surveyed her landscape, running her tongue across her lip, still slightly numb from pressing so tightly against his, tracing with her finger the small blue bruise on her arm. I meet these men and we draw these maps together, over and again, roughly exploring and intimately claiming our bodies as some kind of shared territory and then naming these with terms of deep affection. But maybe, she thought warily, it really is here, now. Or maybe it’s that something worse. She turned on her side and lightly traced her finger down the bridge of a sleeping Will’s nose, thinking, I am going to have to be careful, for this is no happy folk song.
    XVI

    Witches’ Song Four

    Yes, lust and love, yes, licking and sticking,
    yes, sweat and saliva, yes, yes, all that pent energy exploding
    into crystal white light. Me, I stuck with Lyda
    for all of that sugary goodness.
    Sweet fun and fat-cheeked, a hungry lover,
    a lusty girl, skipping over borders and boundaries
    and hauling around that fat dancing bottom
    that teased so many for a slap and pinch.
    No wonder the old river opened up
    and sucked her down, wet and hungry, I’m sure.
    Oh, we rode out many a waxing moon
    in our crooked attic lairs, perched high over
    the narrow streets of Moskva, Petrograd, and Minsk,
    sweet sybaritic dreams, devilish fantasies incarnate
    we wove, yes, seducing soldier, sailor, and monocled trader
    as we wrapped them up warm in our generous flesh.
    Luthiers brought us violins, butchers brought us tenderloins,
    we cooked, shocked, and burned, and whoever we lured in
    found themselves falling into our sweaty, writhing
    triumvirate cocoons as we unveiled, and indulged,
    always and truly good, attentive bacchante girls.
    In the moments