On Grannis Pond Road

There is only the dream of a turtle now,
of days spent paddling the murky water and basking
in the sun. Nights sweaty necked boys full of Busch Light
and bravado tack against the moonlight aiming for the wet
‘pop’ of organs, score keeping the crunch of keratin.
I found a tiny turtle here once before, a red eared slider, alive
but missing an eye and bleeding. I carried him home in my hat.
Bare handed you took him, stroked his heart shaped carapace
and slipped him into your tank. He was the first and last thing
that we ever called ours.

*

In the Details

The devil takes his coffee light
and sweet. He sweeps his crumbs right
onto the rug. The devil wears a rumpled
shirt and above it a white, working man’s grin.
During the National Anthem, he puts his hand
over his heart and winks at you. He likes it
when you lean against the doorframe to watch
him work. He likes to take his time. He likes
to make you wait. The devil leans close when
he says, it’s always better when it’s just you
and me, which is what he says to all the girls.
Everything he gives you belongs to someone else.
He likes your love. But he loves your meanness,
how you talk about the girl who chews like a horse,
how you say, Mr. Ed’s got carrots in her feed bucket
today. It amuses him when you lose your temper
and ball your hands into fists. He likes the cadence
of a raised voice and being the life of the party,
but he doesn’t sign autographs, doesn’t grant
interviews. He saves that for you, lets you listen
to him talk about his childhood, his love
of the snow, his secret pain. You are his favorite
toy. He says, I’ll always take care of you. Always.
He leaves you groping in the dark and deletes
the evidence, but never forgets your birthday.
The devil likes it when you bake him apple pie
and grill him steak. And he likes it when you wear
the stockings with the beautiful backseams
and scrape your finger nails down his spine.
He sets your world on fire. The devil likes to watch
you burn, a Roman candle in white hot pain,
his own sparkling fireworks display. Before
you’re reduced to ash he will take your hand.
He will waltz with you at twilight in the cold concrete
parking garage, inside the warm hue of halogen
security lights. It will be languid and lawless
this shush and sway to imagined music,
sirens in the distance. He will rest his chin
on the top of your head. He will smell your hair
and cradle you til you release like a rag doll
in his arms. Then he’ll check his watch behind
your back satisfied that you’ve forgiven him and leave
you limp. The devil gives good hugs.

*

Temp Job

In the Phase I Clinic, I brew 10 ounces of coffee
in a 10 ounce cup. Sloshing over the rim
is my second sin; the nourishment room
is for the patients. I am an invasive species.
I don’t have scrubs or a labcoat and sometimes
I confuse being earnest with being likeable.
In the lab I parrot the nurses, patient got held.
I don’t know what it means, only that the test tubes
come back empty and we strike through a name.
Time is measured here in points and windows.
It is a long song you cannot hear while you draw
out individual notes. The transport phone trills
with pick ups and the techs tape down the tumbler
so I can return with my blue bag of blood and urine,
without knocking, without breaking my beak
like just another bird butting up against
the glass sky in the hospital atrium.

*

Kate Hubbard is a full-time poet moonlighting as an administrative assistant in the Yale School of Medicine. She has an MFA in poetry from New England College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Rattle, The Florida Review, Salamander, North American Review, and New Ohio Review, among others.