The Wolf Admits His Weakness

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

—E. E. Cummings

Chianti afternoons,

the mozzarella moon,

her pomegranate lips.

Who could resist—could you?

A woman in red who

scarcely knew her own beauty—

or should I say—power?

Even an angel would fall.

Some think I was the snake

that spoiled all her innocence.

But sin is a completely

unoriginal act

and love is a contract that

requires more creativity

than most can sustain,

even a tamed beast.

Lana Hechtman Ayers lives in the Pacific Northwest where she is a poetry manuscript consultant and writing workshop facilitator.  She is also the poetry editor of Crab Creek Review and runs Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Press.  A Hedgebrook and New England College MFA alumna, Pushcart and National Book Award nominee, she is author of two full-length collections of poetry, Dance From Inside My Bones (Snake Nation Press, 2007) and Chicken Farmer I Still Love You (D-N Publishing, 2007), and a chapbook, Love is a Weed (Finishing Line Press, 2006).