Breeding ground, Chicago by Imtiaz Dharker

    
     CHRISTINE:

I always knew I was carrying around
a breeding ground
for the devil.

I mastered the art of nodding, smirking,
doing my hair just so
and wearing pink

to mask the stink of evil
lurking right inside my pride.

I could take the cleverest devil
for a ride.

A good thief cuts the glass
quite cleanly, without a noise
and enters.

There's hardly any sign
that things have been disturbed.

That's how the devil got in,
slipped into my skin,
rearranged my thoughts
like old clothes at the change
of the season.

Slice off my fingertips.
I mustn't leave our prints.

I'm burgling myself, and I'm so good
I won't be caught.

There's nothing here I'm afraid to lose.
Room after room of dusty corners
and mouldy shoes.

But what the hell -
Where are all the precious things,
the gold I thought I had,
the soul begging to be sold?

From I speak for the Devil.

Sleeping Dog by August Kleinzahler

The terrier will not relinquish
his hold on it,
frozen in attack he clenches stillness
and would shake it like a rat
but for its vastness.

                           Bad William trembles,
electrons crakling in his wisp
of beard, warrior-sage,
while all of heaven's soldiers
swoop down in staggered assault:
Canis, Ursus, Aries,
first one then the next.

Willie, jump.
No, there, there, Willie, in the rushes.
A terrible exchange.
Stout Wille. Willie the Brave.
Your back, Willie
Willie, five o'clock high.

Behold, your fearsome arsenal,
its plenitude of feints,
its murderous sorties.
Fair William,
Willie the True,
now is your moment arived:

Sweetie boy
you lovely little killer toy
Willie, hold on.

From: Strange Hours Travelers Keep.

First Things to Hand by Robert Pinsky

In the skull kept on the desk.
In the spider-pod in the dust.

Or nowhere. In milkmaids, in loaves,
Or nowhere. And if Socrates leaves

His house in the morning,
When he returns in the evening

He will find Socrates waiting
On the doorstep. Buddha the stick

You use to clear the path,
And Buddha the dog-doo you flick

Away with it, nowhere or in each
Several thing you touch:

The dollar bill, the button
That works the television.

Even in the joke, the three
Words American men say

After making love. Where's
The remote? In the tears

In things, proximate, intimate.
In the wired stem with root

And leaf nowhere of this lamp:
Brass base, aura of illumination,

Enlightenment, shade of grief.
Odor of the lamp, brazen.

The mind waiting in the mind
As in the first thing to hand.


From First Things to Hand