My Favorite Devil

I don't like real evil.

It sends a frost across my bones

And slows my heart to a labored ache.

I run

Like a cat that's been called

I hide

Like Christians' kindness.



But when I was a little girl,

And my mother was making things so clean that they yelped,

I liked to sit at the splintery picnic table

Playing with poisons.



Mama say,

"Did you drink these?"

She shake me good, like a dirty rag rug, beat me like one, too.

"Did you?"

I'm ugly, not stupid.

I know how to keep my soul and bones together,

And that's why I nap in the middle of the wild dog pack

When you come callin' my name

With that sharp look in your eye.



I like devils.

Daddy taught me good English and good eatin'.

He taught me you laugh when you can and leave when you must.

He's wrong, so wrong,

And dead and gone

But I still love him--

The only man I ever will.



Mama came from the country,

But Daddy was the one who loved it.

Like everything else that warmed his blood,

He made me love it, too.

I run through the cornstalks like a haint,

Slip through the morning fog like a river spirit,

And just before you found me,

I was hiding in a silver maple.

When the anvil cloud came,

Its leaves turned over--

And when the pressure dropped,

So did I.



You, my favorite devil, said,

"Who are you, little fireball?'

Ain't nobody.

Never was.

As the funnel came across the farm land behind you,

You told me,

"Let me scoop you up,"

And I became your debris.

You were the first to make me shout out the savior's name,

But from my back,

Not my knees.

You were the first to say,

"Beautiful

Beautiful

Beautiful girl,"

And I broke apart in the storm of you, amazed and believing at last,

Crying for joy

In the swirl and devastation we lay in.



Well I don't care.



I knew you were a devil all along.

I am the daughter of two devils, after all,

And I can tell which shade of black is the one I love.

My friends all warned me, "That one is poison.

Did you drink it?

Did you?"

Not just yes, but hell yes,

And now I feel wicked beautiful.

If I have to live with lies, let them be your lies,

All down the rest of my life.

_______