Ask Me About Hell
There is something standing in the street.
With sharp teeth and hands made of metal,
it paces the edges of the neighborhood.
Sometimes it wears the face of my mother,
other times my uncle long dead and buried
turned to marsh and twigs in the dirt. Still
other times it wears the face of our governor
with his face pockmarked with grease from
fingers dipped in tar, clutching a shined and
toothy Bible to his always damp chest. Mostly
it wears the face of anyone – the man on the corner
of some street with his sign ASK ME ABOUT
HELL leering at the way my hands flutter
against my thighs, my knobbed knees – the woman
at the coffee shop who asks me if I know Jesus
and if I know him well, who hovers at the counter
watching me pull the shots, steam the milk,
who takes the cup with clawed hands and furred
fingers – the child who asks their mother is that
a boy or a girl and the mother that says its ugly
pointing a long sleeve of fog at the way my hair
curls against my ears – the friend who stares
as the woman I love puts her hip against mine,
who pulls his lips back at the way she goes
to touch the back of my neck, who grabs me on
the way out says keep that to a minimum next time
and next time I do, next time I shed my skin
and pack it into a box near my front door, put
on a pretty pink face with pretty pink eyelashes
with my hands in my pockets, pull out my teeth
and replace them with shiny beads, pull my
reflection from the mirror and bury it as deep
in the yard as I can dig, next time I walk
right by the thing in the street and it doesn’t even
look my way. It can’t even see me.
Maddie C. is a poet from South Carolina. Their poems have been published in The Madison Review and Miracle Monocle. They have a cat called Goose.
