All rolling eyeballs, and he didn’t like me much.
He just wanted to talk talk talk
about himself and his bunioned foot,
the metatarsal where Milton still lurked.
He didn’t enter me at all, anywhere.
I saw to that.
I tossed him the ball snake
and he held it up like a king’s orb.
Then the snake unraveled itself slowly,
showing the creamy fawn belly, twisted
like candy cane with the oxidized red of its back.
It dripped to the ground and indicated
a preference for the present by slithering to me.
It drew pictures in the silver sand at my feet,
writhing across the story, erasing it
even as it was told:
The wrath of the crow is the pride of the crow.
A worm cannot turn.
Take the knife from your heart and you will feel.
Take the axe from your skull and you will think.
For she said, Lo, I am cast down.
For she said, The climb is precipitous.
When the tiger dances, she has no partner.