Peaceable Kingdom, The

Rarely did her toenails scrape the ceiling. Twice she dialed 911 when his nightcap concussed against plaster -or maybe a rainforest's conifer? She wore a furpiece. Sometimes their red fitted sheets maneuvered to embrace them like pythons, but he growled and roared, becoming a lion, and the snakes slithered behind the headboard--or was it the headwaters of the Nile? She squeezed to wring ultimate convulsions from a stainless tusk quilted with nerves. Thrusts and inductions were multiple and fierce, as if a rhinoceros mated with a wildebeest, unmaking the veldt, leaving scratches on the horizon.

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