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Home > Poem | The Devil's Delusion

I lie on my back in the lawnchair to study
the trees claw up toward heaven.
They have all the sap I lack.

It’s doubt I send rivering cloudways
in great boiling torrents, as if all creation
were a bad stage set I could wave

                                                            way away,
then I could cast my dark spells in a blink
and a flaming fingersnap—and
a universe de Mare pops up

so I win the everlasting argument against all
that was or will or tiredly is.
As if my soul would not in that blink

be obliterate. As if, as kids say.

Issue: 
May 2, 2014 [1]
Tags
Poetry [2]

Mary Karr’s most recent books of poetry and memoir are Sinners Welcome and Lit, respectively. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.

Please email comments to [email protected] [3] and join the conversation on our Facebook page [4].

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[1] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/issues/2014-05-02 [2] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poetry [3] mailto:[email protected] [4] http://www.facebook.com/commonwealmagazine [5] http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-devils-delusion [6] https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/poem-devils-delusion [7] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/print/35857