Thousand Devils

Author: K. Silem Mohammad

Publisher: Combo Books (2004)

Toward some crooked vein of empathy 
A subsong marries its twin in reply:
Can there be a code joined to right or ruth
Adequately, this star-freaked wide isthmus?"

-from "The Lollard's Remonstrance."

"If an ancient had an epileptic seizure, he was possessed by a thousand devils. When he regained consciousness, the devils were driven out by a healer. The devils had to go someplace. In this case they have gone into the poems. The poems roar or whisper balefully from the sand or from the wind, or stir unseen in the coiling silence; or fall from the heavens like crushing incubi. With their dismal fooleries they transform our worthless days and disentangle a thousand evils, and they are indeed, incredible."

–Nada Gordon