The Devil's Trill

            Pastoral abuse
reportedly on
            the rise as fiddlers
                        play on—horsehair whip
            but part of the bow's
passionate sawing
            with no caesura
                        in sight in the growing
            agitation over
another lost teen—
            so many faces
                        plastered all over
            town it's hard to find
which telephone poles
            are not yet armored
                        with scabs of rusted
            staples where fliers
for all the missing
            children had been—

Copyright © 2006 Timothy Liu All rights reserved
from River Styx
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission