By Mary Karr

The Devil’s tour of hell did not include   
a factory line where molten lead   
spilled into mouths held wide,

no electric drill spiraling screws
into hands and feet, nor giant pliers   
to lower you into simmering vats.

Instead, a circle of light
opened on your stuffed armchair,
whose chintz orchids did not boil and change,

and the Devil adjusted   
your new spiked antennae
almost delicately, with claws curled

and lacquered black, before he spread   
his leather wings to leap   
into the acid-green sky.

So your head became a tv hull,
a gargoyle mirror. Your doppelganger   
sloppy at the mouth

and swollen at the joints   
enacted your days in sinuous   
slow motion, your lines delivered

with a mocking sneer. Sometimes   
the frame froze, reversed, began   
again: the red eyes of a friend

you cursed, your girl child cowered   
behind the drapes, parents alive again   
and puzzled by this new form. That’s why

you clawed your way back to this life.

• Living
• Religion

Poet Bio

Mary Karr was born in Groves, Texas. She attended Macalester College and, after taking time off to travel and become involved in the anti-apartheid movement, earned an M.F.A. from Goddard College. She has taught at Tufts University, Emerson College, Harvard University and Sarah Lawrence College, as well as Syracuse University, where she is currently on the faculty. Karr’s poetry and prose frequently include autobiographical elements, including her hardscrabble childhood, teenage drug-use, failed marriage and adult alcoholism, as well as her subsequent recovery and conversion to Catholicism. See More By This Poet

More Poems about Living

More Poems about Religion