POETRY
Blues
by Justin Vicari

flashquake, Spring 2006, Vol. 5, Iss. 3

When the devil takes a young man
walking in the swamps,
he tests the strength of his newfound friend
by punching him in the arm.

The moon is a lava of tears in the socket sky.
Maybe there'll be a rooster dance. Four roads,
each dragging its wind: tundra, jungle, prairie,
ocean. The devil wears a dead sharecropper's overalls.

Lightning scores the cedars, they bleed pomade.
Midnight breaks the last window. In the cracked pane,
the young man catches a glimpse of the old sharecropper's face
pouring out two shots of mold-fuzz for his eyes.

Justin Vicari is the author of the chapbooks In a Garden of Eden (Plan B Press, 2005) and Woman Bathing Light to Dark (forthcoming from Toad Press, 2006). His work appears or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Interim, Rhino, Eclipse, Slant, Third Coast, Gin Bender Poetry Review, Spillway, Poetry Motel, Stirring, Poems Niederngasse, Memorious, and other reviews. In 2005 he received the Third Coast Poetry Prize and the New Millennium Writings Poetry Prize, and was nominated for a Pushcart.

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