Portia Steele Award Organization(c)

First Place Winner, Poetry

Super Hero
by
Carol W. Bachofner
Rockland, Maine

Up jumps the devil,
bone cutters in his right hand,
a recipe for bees in his left.

He's a high-profile man
in the beforelife, wears a bowler
to tip at matrons, to doff
with real flair at the theatre.

He's fond of throwing his long
silhouette against the wall
of the Renaissance Museum.

A big baseball fan,
he's all beered up in the bleachers,
waving his #1 finger, watching
the jiggle show, face smeared
in the colors of the visiting team.
He catches every foul ball.

We're not talking :free speech here,
flirting and flicking his tongue
is his biblical right. He's a silk dragon
on the prowl. I say I'm married. He says "so?"

There's no fire to end this,
to burn away what is rotten,
just a searing bolt of too-close
lightning, a chorus of lions
in the bush, a stinging of the heel,
a crunch of splintering bone.