Devil's Backbone


Hoarding blown-up memories of
Having been taken for a chump
He's filed in small claims for order:
Sawed-off shotgun, hand on the pump.

Perfect posture, stoop-superior,
Auburn loafers propping up slacks,
From his belt-bound, clean, white singlet,
Broad arms thrust forth in parallax;

His sense of hard, unmetered toil
Mirrored in his firm left grip
And static builds like thankless yield
On his right index fingertip.

What narrative behind those eyes
Scanning local as well as stranger
For menace coating the everyday:
The long view on immediate danger.

Just like that the man beats form
To children plotting through the street;
He's their own woodsman toting axe,
Their own ramshackle-watch elite.

The passersby, it never fails,
Turn up and towards his perch to nod;
There's something in his air exhaled
That's warned them he's no sort of fraud.

The devil's backbone grows in some,
External structure of their spine;
His strength of character is fixed
Across his lap, his carabine.

He's stitched himself of stark habit
What was denied him from the jump;
You can't mistake his darning pin:
Sawed-off shotgun, hand on the pump.


-originally appeared in IthacaLit