Friend of the Devil
See here on the ultrasound, that thing that looks like a comma? It will separate the elements in a series. I can't believe we're even having this conversation to begin with. The womb's a fine and private place, or am I thinking of a doughnut? You ask me, the hippies still have a lot to answer for. But no one ever asks me. I smell pasta. I was a nurse during the war. The soldiers in their dying pleaded, "Can you get one of the other nurses?" I know what no duck knows. Tomorrow is Thursday. Come, Lord Jesus, let us not bandy words. I too have followed the Dead. I saw you and the devil talking. Tell me, bluntly, what he said. Weren't you just a little tempted?
Second Sex (Penguin Books, 2014)
Phew, the code of Substack finally worked. I hoped someone would analyze this poem. I want to make sure I get it!
Michael (I assume eventually you'll see this) I want to acknowledge the risk and the guts that it takes to offer up an opening-out of your mind. It is one thing to write bravely, experimenting with sense and para-sense, privately; something entirely different to put it out into 'critical reception'-land. While I don't 'get' each stanza fully, I feel enough from each, to feel connected to you as a fellow writer/ fellow life traveller. What the editors of OP have done by including your poem in this part of the Journal, is give me hope. I gain from your success, in this publishing, a much-needed sense of relief. So, you and they, have brought light into a tiny corner of the gigantic maelstrom we're somehow a part of. Congrats!