Slash and Burn
I.
Hot footprints in red dust,
baked by the sun into fossils.
Headed to buy milk,
you pass under the angĆ” tree
for some shade,
white petals fall like a blizzard,
and the tree dances and rejoices,
optimistic as a wedding cake.
Heat waves in the distance
form a devil, feet bare and cloven
in sandals and tan, a hairy man
with a beard and mustache.
The sweat gathers and cools you.
II.
A pregnancy and a promise,
a golden finger here and there.
Nervous hands that fumble
and tremble,
that never find the target
like an arrow borne against the current
through chopped waters at night
in a balsa wood boat.
A pregnancy and a promise,
the American promise of gold
skylines and indigo waters
that you gather from synthetic ink drawings
and water-marked postcards.
You hold your breath and dive,
though youāre terrified of oceans.
III.
Your mother calls to say
the angĆ” tree didnāt last
the fire, black char surrounds the stump
where it snowed that day
you met the devil. Headed to buy milk,
you stop and pick up monocot seeds
of irises and daffodils and lilies
but they donāt bloom come spring.
Somewhere in Africa they scorch
the earth for nitrogen-rich soil,
and while you feed promises,
you calculate distances for safe flames.
IV.
Itās your second time, not anything like the first
time, where your hands were nervous
and pale like those roses you got that one time
or those carnations that other time.
You remember
how their white petals sank like mercury
to the table, or how you sank that other time,
or that time you sunk heirloom crystal glasses
aimed at the devil, the kaleidoscopic ones
made more beautiful in the shatter, peaceful
in their brokenness, refracting waves
on tiles like a beach at noon
where the sun bakes the waters and they sigh
in relief as they break on shore.
V.
You decide to see a man
for the exorcism. The devil is excised
but he is benign. A swollen mass
of purples and reds, a crumpled heap
of wildflowers left on roads for roadkill.
You pick it up and it is hot and scalds you
so you sink it down
and laugh. The devil is pathetic.
Somewhere, a mangrove flowers
and dances at high noon as it sinks
its seeds in a current of seafoam,
in waters icy and white.