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The Devil Writing

By John Nyman
The Devil is not exactly
an author
 
He doesn’t write a word
unless you’re speaking
 
And he doesn’t mind repeating
 
But he also doesn’t hesitate
to falsify
 
He knows that talk is cheap,
though speech is free
 
He’s fluent, but obtusely
 
Perhaps his evil’s mostly
just banality
 
The Devil writes poetry
at the poetry reading
 
His ethics is doing it my way

The Devil In Person

By John Nyman
The Devil’s clothed in nothing-
coloured skin
 
The Devil’s naked—he isn’t
faking it
 
He’s just a character
he’s in— 
 
A sinister person, with a person’s
rights
 
The Devil’s not a monster
all the time
 
Although he doesn’t empathize,
he finds
 
That I’m completely justified

Praise God

By John Nyman
What I work to stay clear of & almost do is irony
                                                —Phil Hall, Guthrie Clothing

My God is not the Devil,
and that’s enough for me.
 
I praise God without irony
and sing my praises honestly.
 
I praise the flavour of flavoured things
and do not believe in consistency— 
 
What else would I have learned from Kanye?
I praise that I may write this wrongly,
 
That I may make a distinction at all.
I praise that I’m banal, but evil? Hardly.
 
I praise the right to live life falsely.
I believe that sunscreen will protect me,
 
That there’s still a world in the cave.
I praise that we’ll all die eventually,
 
Praise God for resembling His enemy
and letting me disbelieve.


Splits

By John Nyman
I leave it to the ferns to decide
if the first duty of a life is to die
 
or to make die, since they split their stems.
Although we toke from the same pot,
 
we don’t both take the same breaths.
My family taught me that. A photo:
 
our simian faces bundled abominable— 
three pea pods in the same pea plant.
 
It reminds me death is a sickness shed,
forever the outer element.
 
Its game is zero-sum. Thank God
(for now) we’ve won.

Holy of Holies

By John Nyman
The family praying softly at the table
knows best they’re eating dinner at McDonald’s.
 
The rest of us have placed our bets on seeing
our holy city etched in red and gold
 
and round as rainbows. Everyone puffs up
and huffs from a paper sack. I’ve heard some cultures
 
hold that bread contains the Spirit’s breath,
while meat’s smell speaks of Earth’s first secret: fire,
 
stolen, then clothed as if it were a master.
I’ve also heard this place is famous elsewhere,
 
at least with reference to its many copies’
carbon-copied meals; the refugees
 
from Syria, for example, after spitting
out their sponsors’ multi-culti dish
 
just wished that they’d been taken to McDonald’s
(which wouldn’t have been nearly as expensive).
 
We’re all alike, you know; we measure life
in small percentages and hope the fullness
 
of instants brings us hope for something else.
It just turns out we’ve thrown away the noun,
 
like 3D-printed people counting up
our holy holies. But I can’t say I’m worried:
 
overstocked with fraudulent rewards cards
from a cousin who doesn’t talk about his job,
 
I’m glad to drink my seven coffees gratis
and receive the eighth one free (my holy holy),
 
glad to think that this is really Heaven,
really, and sit amidst the hundredth billion served.


John Nyman's debut poetry collection, Players (Palimpsest Press), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award in 2017. These poems are from his new chapbook, The Devil, forthcoming from knife | fork | book in March 2020. Find John online at johnnymanwriting.wordpress.com and instagram.com/selected.works.
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