Devil’s Parlor Trick by Charlie Clark

It is only now that you recall the emperor

scorpion he at parties would take out and with

two open hands on the granite kitchen countertop

bait into stinging him the pain the gag once the tail

stuck in raised up until like eight scrambling

ends of lace it hung from the thick pink turning

purple at the puncture and like chirping fan

blades the laughter in the windless air of the airless

little kitchen coming from the heady smear of faces

to whom nothing lasting had been revealed

watching what he’d done be undone be gently

shaken back into its tank and how he allowed

each to test the pulse of the darkened ring already

growing stiff there in the center of his hand

*

Charlie Clark studied poetry at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in New England Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, and other journals. A 2019 NEA fellow, he is the author of The Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2020). He lives in Austin, TX