The Devils

Shrewd old crow
Was Ma Haggerty.
What she didn’t know about
Sexual virtuosity you could’ve scrawled
On the inverse of a clitoris
With a wedge-nibbed marker.
You wouldn’t guess to glimpse,
Prim picket fence, herbaceous border,
All the accoutrements of propriety
The very semblance of order and sobriety.
Her lovely daughter, Chastity,
Sweeping the front step
Beneath a modest bonnet;
Yes, a chap might have guessed at some secret
Yen for sodomy in her pale, uncovered ankles
But such lusty reveries stayed
No more than young men’s shameful
Night time visions,
Waxing till they peaked in nocturnal emissions.
No boy ever gazed X-ray through those garments
And witnessed the wanton streak that ran,
Raw and scarlet,
From the nape of her neck to her firm, tan buttocks.
Christ, the in-crowd who met at her
Clandestine orgies
Lost some keystone part that they’ll never get back.
‘After this, your life will be
An anticlimax,’ she’d whisper at burst-point,
Then leave them to their afterglow,
Their aching to remember,
Whole decades of blowing on embers.