Say the devil’s name three times & he’ll come
out to smoke on the porch with you.
Ice melts in your clay cup,
hot southern summer
night hums up your legs, & one freckle
of sweat tells a secret to
your wrist. The man
in the rocking chair nods at the dust
because he knew the devil
was there, invited him
inside. You watch him age one hundred years
on each cigarette in front
of your eyes like folk lore.
Something winged dies against the overhead light,
hushed scorch sways the
air like the devil’s name
& he reappears bigger. Fills the storm door,
climbs inside your mouth,
& out through the back
of your throat. His blond head lopes down
the walk, hard in your
sight as a hurricane lamp.
Broad stroke: blade of his shoulders
cut
the street’s dark skirt,
long Appaloosa stride scaring
the garden’s cacophony to wet quiet. Old
man
on the porch says, He’s
bad. & you remember arson,
want to drag the devil back, light another fire,
& unfold
the ritual one last time.
The devil sings to you, Bah-bye,
soft as gulf-side sand. You used to fuck him,
slipping
eyes on the huge print of
Venus watching from her shell
on the wall. Sometimes you traded bodies—
Hers the one slick &
giving in the devil’s lilac bed,
yours standing naked behind that heavy rope of
hair.
Not yet noosed from his
rafters, said the curltongue
of braid at your knees. Not yet.
Amy Parkes is
a queer Nova Scotia poet living with mental illness. Parkes holds an English
BAH from Acadia and a poetry MFA from UNC Greensboro. Her poetry appears in the
Bacopa Literary Review and Barrelhouse Magazine, among others.
Other poems are forthcoming with the North Carolina Literary Review and Grist
Journal, both as prize finalists. Parkes' first piece of creative
nonfiction appears in Studies in Canadian Literature.
