Saint Michael and the Devil



Girl limbs on a boy’s trunk,
shoulder full of quills, Saint Michael
comes to trample the devil.
The archangel rattles
brass scales to weigh the creature
at his feet—a sinuous seraph
hissing with burns.
Satan is weighed
and found wanting something
more than capriole eyes
and kites of bony skin.
The saint sends his demon
down a fiery fault to earth,
where want for someone
such as Michael makes people
here below reach for any supple
creature that crawls out of the blue.


Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review #32, Spring/Summer 2009