by Z. T. Corley
after Betye Saar’s The Beast that Pounds the Devil’s Dust, 1964
I was made in the Devil’s image,
something like a bull or a buffalo
or a unicorn, wallowing in the dust
of damnation. I kneel
at the Devil’s feet like a wife
before her husband, resting
my head on the burning ground,
offering my throat for the usual violence.
Fire doesn’t understand pain.
Like most creatures, I have no words
for torture or torment.
The world almost killed me,
but I was transformed—like a woman
from myth—into a beast,
distinct from skin and blood,
and set to work in the fields of hell.
I could stare at the godless sun for hours
without going blind. Having once been a woman
and having once been an African, I know
what it is to be property. I was no longer
the mule of the world; I was freed
from my terrene lusts, my cruel tendencies,
my small pleasures. Even the Devil
misses home, but what is nostalgia
to a beast of burden?
Z. T. Corley is a Tennessee-based poet who recently graduated from Austin Peay State University with her B.A. in English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Roanoke Review, Red Mud Review, Revolute, and Outskirts. She is currently working on a poetry collection.
January House Literary Journal 
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