TRACI BRIMHALL

The Heart in Jeopardy Fabricates a New Fortune


I want you in the worst way, he says, and I don’t know
if that means on all fours wearing the rosary I stole

from a nun or on his mother’s bed threatening
to punish him, but I say, Okay, and start crushing

grapes between my breasts like usual. Earlier today
the Ouija board misspelled its answers, told me,

You are one of the devil’s thirteen bridles, and I thought
perhaps I can control him, perhaps the next time

he comes to me I will slip the bit into his mouth
as he licks a lump of sugar from my palm, perhaps,

just once, I will refuse the conjugal untying, the gold
and gloom of his black-tongued ultimatum.

But he brings me yellow velvet shoes, spreads out
photos from his latest investigation and draws

a chalk outline on the floor. Like this, he says.
So I do. Necromantic. Prayerful. A willful shadow

crawls up my legs and won’t come down. The Ouija
board said, This is the tie that blinds. It said, Never

tantalize the devil’s rock. I hold still as bells publish
the morning light, stiffen as the stolen horses return

from following pleasure to a darker north, carrying
canting executioners on their backs and the blackest joy.

 
  
143 The Paris-American

Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Slate, The Believer, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and Best American Poetry 2013 & 2014.  She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the King/Chávez/Parks Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts

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