Handcuff King


by Eve Strillacci

In Siberia they stripped you, peeled your suit
from pale shoulders, searched the pockets before

fingering the backs of your knees, your fine slacks
forgotten in a dusty prison corner. It's no wonder

that they reveled in your hirsute calves, your darkly
matted thighs, bowed bones allowing for your escape,

time and again, from the manacles whose ghostly grip
was test, was daily undertaking. Did they joke with you?

Did they stroke your shoulders, pull your cock a little,
braying at the size of it in the shriveling Russian winter?

A small man, half a foot taller than your wife, and what
they could not expect from you was victory, escape.

Inconceivable, that they had grazed your furred chest
with curious thumbs and not taken in the glint of you,

the swallowed key burning in your soft stomach. Sensing
only your heat: from shame, they guessed, brushing flamed

cheeks, but it was guile, or something like it, shifting
beneath their hands like borrowed fire.