DEVIL UNDERSTANDS DELIGHT’S ABANDON by Charlie Clark

I like how people still use the phrase dead of night.

It makes the night seem more exciting 

and them more resigned to becoming ghosts as they move through it, 

though no less oblivious to the fox skirting those trees waving 

like two anemic legs shorn to the bone and waiting for the wind to break 

them, though for the battery of their lives they have eked out 

enough of something good here that walking with my child as she sings sugar 

to her heart her heart doesn’t sink to see them. 

Of all the sensitive documents I have eaten, 

this one remains the freshest. Like that place on my leg 

where the wound was. I still touch it roughly just to show the pain 

is gone. It feels like dancing atop a frozen river with someone 

on shore watching, waving above their head a branch as pointed as an antler, 

as though that were the only thing you needed to keep you safe.