The Anatomy of Fortune

Irregular Ode: "The Devil"

You are the teeth of foggy days,

when life moves in cold motion.

The sharpest point in the eye,

where light exposes the stain 

of tryst. The pickpocket of

monkshood seed.

The bleeding heart that got

spring cattle in the lung. The tremble

and stagger of death, livestock

littered like swollen stars,

brown and cream.

Oh, devil, you are not archaic testament

nor pew wrought with blasphemy,

wooden slurs carved in boredom.

Not rosary, preachers’ hands,

bone or altar of Assisi.

Nor brimstone, inferno or

red demons of Cain.

You are under a porch stoop.

In a broken light bulb, the eye

of gutted fish, expelled placenta.

You are everywhere 

we are not, anywhere we are.