If I were you I'd be careful
unzipping your body to release
the imp stashed there. So I said.
I knew it would leave
a zodiac of thumbtacks
on my chair, pretend-feed
my tonsils to hungry blackbird
chicks, steal my lunch
unitl I was thin enough to hide
under the school lectern
or between library books,
leave an open can of sardines
in my desk, brand my right
hand with white-hot tongs
in Biology, steal my old 35mm
Olympus camera, let a mule
run riot through the canteen,
try to teach English to a crescent
of foxes... until it was caught
by an old farmer's wife with a pail
of sour milk, the copper molars
from a local saint, a jar full of eels
and enough hemlock to make me
parley with the Devil.
