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Home > Poetry >  In Love with the Nightstalker
Published:

Malak Mattar, Untitled (detail), 2024, charcoal on paper

In Love with the Nightstalker

To kiss death, to sleep
With a perverted persona
In my mind, to make love
To Satan & his square-jawed effigies

Smiling from Esguire & GQ.
His double profile in a bedroom mirror:
Crescent, knife in a father’s hand.
With so much fear, there’s no

Orgasm. The brain: a cruel king
Ogles from a stone tower.
Or, a dog goes down
On all fours,

Crawling in the dust. I stop
& wag my tail. Whining for bread
Held out in his left hand, I come forth,
Eyes fixed on his right fist cocked like a hammer.

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Yusef Komunyakaa teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton University. His latest book of poems is Thieves of Paradise (Wesleyan, 1998), and he recorded a CD, Love Notes from the Madhouse with John Tchicai (8th Harmonic Breakdown). (updated 1999)

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