Watch Me Kick the Devil
shaun turner
Lately, trouble with resolutions.
I dream of a burrow,
a ratlike pink nose,
the dark.
I ask:
When does a habit
become a bad habit? Shit,
anything: The New Yorker, luxury
coffee, sleeping pills, whatever.
Sometimes, in the dream,
quiet, the animal
carries the loose dug-up
soil in its hands
or paws
to one of its many shallow secret enterances.
I ask:
When did it get harder
to love an old thing?
Sometimes, in the dream,
the frantic animal rises up.
Other times, it lays. Its burrow:
the twists and coils
it clawed into the earth. Its secret:
A dark hole
is just a dark hole.
121