Poem by Mike Amado

"Chains" by James Conant



The Game Piece
". . . Chained in the Abyss for a Thousand Years"

This place is getting to me.
I rummage through the shelves
in the smoking room
for board games
that I don’t want to play.
I’m like the guy in the corner
culling the ash trays for stubs
that have a few puffs left.
They all call him Thorazine Seamus,
He talks to himself like
he stabbed himself in the back.
We’re in our own worlds,
gold fish in produce bags.
I found a game piece that was red
like the detonation of a nuclear bomb.
(I think that’s what it looks like.)
I saw it on the news.
They test them in the desert, underground.
They say the blast can ricochet
inside the earth for one month straight like
a tumor at one thousand miles per hour.
The game piece reminds me of the devil.
I’ll use it as a housing
for my demons.
I tie spokes of red string
around my devil like chains.
I broke open the catch in the shower drain,
dangled my devil down the pipe
that’ll serve as an abyss.
Will the pipe last for a millennium?
Will I be quartered forever?
Only one of us will leave here alive.