Slash watches the Devil gyrate
serpentine for thronging souls / birds
with human heads / talons that grasp
the sky in shreds. Every song is a heart
is a car running on fumes on the way
out of town. Slash has walked barefoot
here where ground gives way to blood
encrusted knives / shards of songs
caught in throats of boys too eager
to be men / women fearing what waits
for girls. Happiness is a kind of violence /
violence a perfect guitar string / gorgeous
scars mark your body long
before you encounter sin. Slash knows how
to confront evil / how to strangle beauty
from the air with calloused fingertips.
Slash knows when the Devil asks
if you know where you are, it’s best
not to answer. I’m here, he replies.
I’ve always been here.
–
Amorak Huey is author of the poetry collections Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018), Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), and Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), as well as two chapbooks. He is co-author of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
W. Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor, 2014) and This Is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence Press, forthcoming in 2020), and co-author of Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018). A Kundiman fellow, he is co-editor of Waxwing magazine and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he teaches at Grand Valley State University.