Devil’s Lake

Joey De Jesus: Self-Portrait at 24: A Triptych

When it all began

my browning skin just the toast of hers
her rotting spine, her slouch, an arm,
flakes of mica, course hair in a pillowcase
when it all began—Mr. Morse,
twelfth grade, handed me a copy
of The Wild Iris and Pat Rosal.
Pat. Asked me to read and I wrote
about black rosary, the metaphor being
chicory buds stilted in frost and how
we hope they might bloom,
don’t we? Oh, how I wheedled
those plastic beads like a string
of rare pearls. That was the beginning
—absolute.

Prince of Foxes

Step with me into timber, vulpine
—fox bodies strewn
across a canvas of asphalt

gold sequins, black nail
thunderdrumming
seekers in nodding thistle

hope lingers so I wait / unforgiving

I wear a crown of gold berries

I have a wife with no womb

cracked rifle

give your soul—fornicate—lose your soul

I have a wife threading needles

I pray of divine axe for slaughtering

when numb leg’s snapped in iron jaw
I’ll gnaw off good limbs—whispering
ghost forest. Rest in peace—

the lift of a wasp in an upgust

mountain wrens plump with birdsong choir

I am witch of tinder
and air—if anything is consecrated
the body is consecrated

oak shade, shadowbinding

reborn again
I hear of warships on the horizon.

Goetia

I—circle of air rusting, whorl of thatch roof, tinning rain, milk
adder bone, six-legged fire horse, King Agares on a crocodile,
make me invisible—wild raisin, beeswax—riverland duke,
if you are the shook earth mix me nebulous dust, solar, cyclonic.
Seated atop the birds of hell, I’ll show you my battlement
of wasteland ash. Allow me: 3 times stabbed in my home
—language master unabated can you not hear it?
my pistolwhip honesty—black craft—my snakeroot, my boneset

JOEY DE JESUS is originally from the Soundview neighborhood of the Bronx. He received his BA from Oberlin College and his MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cortland Review, Dislocate, Guernica, Kin Poetry Journal, Rhino, Versal, and elsewhere. Joey was the winner of the LUMINA vol. XI poetry contest, judged by Carolyn Forché. He is based in NYC. (Photography by Thomas Sayers Ellis, 2012) More from this issue >