Vamoose Demon, Demon Begone! by Brent Terry

The Red Shoes, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2019

Vamoose Demon, Demon Begone!
 
I can’t spell, so I wore a leotard to the exorcism.
I can’t sing, so I screamed like a cello in love. 
I can’t get over you, so I tattooed 
your heart, brick by throbbing brick, 
on the wall along the ditch into which 
I hurled your next-to-last red shoe. 
Now you jitterbug among rushes and rusting 
shopping carts, spiders’ silken filaments, 
tadpoles writhing their slippery cursive like noodles 
in alphabet gumbo. You goggle frogspawn, 
fondle postdiluvian bric-a-brac and lost 
lottery tickets, hawk unclaimed futures 
while phantasms play hide and seek 
in moldering fedoras and ankle bracelets, 
mood rings and mismatched sneakers, 
shivering an ectoplasmic shimmy and singing
find me somebody to love. They wind 
themselves around your ankles like a kitten 
or a fog, slither up your inseam, run fingers 
along your dendrites like piano keys on fire.
They tickle your clattering ivories, 
diddle what you thought had died. 
Gossamer doodads and glowing motes cavort 
among the sunbeams. The insect orchestra 
tune their instruments while I limber-up 
in the wings. They say it takes two to tangle. 
Are you reeaaaady to rhuumbaaa?!?! 
Because who hasn’t slam-danced with a specter, 
who hasn’t made love to a ghost? 
Who hasn’t hitched themselves to a monster, 
lashed themselves to a pomegranate 
and screamed for juice? Who hasn’t cha-chaed 
off the deep end in one cherry-red Chuck, 
laces undone, tongue tied-up in elaborate knots?
 
​Brent Terry

​This duo is part of a larger collaboration between writer Brent Terry and artist Lorette C. Luzajic. Lorette is creating several collage-paintings to respond to Brent's poems, and Brent is creating poetry to respond to Lorette's artworks. 

Lorette C. Luzajic is an award-winning artist whose collage paintings have been collected in over 25 countries. She is also the author of Pretty Time Machine: ekphrastic prose poems, and editor of The Ekphrastic Review. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.